Here is an Amrut to start the month. It’s not a whisky though but a rum. Though Amrut is most famous now for its single malt whisky, they’ve actually been making rum for much longer. This, however, is not one of their old-school rums but a blend of their own rum with several Caribbean rums—from Jamaica, Barbados and Guyana: hence Two Indies. I’m not sure when it was first released but I first encountered it last December when I was visiting a friend in Coonoor in South India. She had a bottle that had come her way from Karnataka, the state in which Amrut is located. I tasted it then and really liked it. I didn’t look for it on my return to Delhi on that trip but when I was there again last month I made it a point to seek it out. Sure enough, it was easily available in liquor stores in Gurgaon (where my parents live); and since Gurgaon is located in Haryana and Haryana has some of the lowest prices for alcohol in all of India, I got this bottle for a very reasonable price: Rs. 1500 or $17.50. I opened it a few days after getting back to Minnesota and am very pleased to say that I like it as much now as I had in December. Here now are my notes.

This is available in the US too, by the way—though some stores carry bottles with quite different packaging; and the price, of course, is higher.

Amrut Two Indies (42.8%; blend of Caribbean and Indian rum; from my own bottle)

Nose: The Jamaican rum makes its presence felt as I pour the rum into my glass and again as I raise the glass to my lips: that diesel and rotting garbage funk leads everything else; below that is some pleasant brown sugar sweetness, leading into light caramel. Continues in this vein. A drop of water pushes the funk back and pulls out banana (“shurely shome mishtake“).

Palate: As indicated by the nose with a good dose of aniseed mixed in. Good sipping strength and texture. . Some citrus on the second sip along with just a bit of caramelized banana. With time that bitter, burnt caramel note from the finish pops out earlier. Water pushes the bitter note back and brightens things up on the palate as well.

Finish: Long. A slight bitterness develops (burnt caramel) but then subsides. As on the palate with water.

Comments: Whether you like this as a sipping rum or not will likely depend heavily on your feelings about funky Jamaican rum as those notes dominate, even though the Jamaican rum component in the blend is probably not the highest. Me, I can’t get enough of that stuff and so I quite like this lite version of it. I suspect, however, that it will be even better in cocktails. I look forward to experimenting with it.

Rating: 84 points.