Inside the Goan distilleries trying to revive feni, a 500-year-old Indian liquor
- The potent drink, made from crushed cashew apples or coconut palm sap, has in recent decades fallen out of favour
- National regulations make it difficult for feni to be sold outside Goa because the spirit is officially classified as ‘country liquor’
Five centuries after Goans began making feni – a pungent, fermented liquor not for the faint-hearted – a new crop of distillers is hoping to take the spirit global. But first, they have to convince other Indians to drink it.
Usually made from crushed cashew apples or coconut palm sap, the potent drink has in recent decades fallen out of favour in Goa – a former Portuguese colony south of Mumbai – with the arrival of foreign liquor brands.
“I wanted to translate traditional knowledge for a modern audience,” said Hansel Vaz, whose Cazulo distillery uses centuries-old techniques to make feni while inventing cocktails that are easy on the nose and smooth on the palate.
Production is limited to the cashew apple harvesting season from February to May, with custom dictating that only the fruit that falls to the ground is ripe enough to be used for feni.
While more modern distilleries use metal crushers to extract the juice for fermentation, at Cazulo the cashew apple – its nut removed – is dumped into a stone basin carved into the ground.
A barefoot farmworker holds on to ropes and stomps the fruit until the juice is extracted and transferred into underground clay pots.
