MAHUA DAYS
DESMONDJI SPIRITS, CHITTOOR, ANDHRA PRADESH
One cannot craft a successful brand overnight, something Desmond Nazareth learnt when he first decided to create agave spirits. With 10 years of research behind him, Nazareth finally launched Agave in various strengths, using the agave plant found in parts of the Deccan. “The initial years were tough,” he says, “but we held on. We produce craft spirits of international standards in our distillery. We are selling our 100 per cent Agave in Europe and the US. This is a market flooded with tequila from Mexico, so our premium brand competes directly with the best.” DesmondJi is also exporting cachaca style sugarcane-based spirit and 100 per cent Agave to Europe.
Their latest baby, though, is mahua, a spirit made from a sweet flower found mainly in the tribal belts of central India. These flowers are sourced via tribal entrepreneurs and then transported to Andhra Pradesh where they are fermented and distilled. “Mahua presents our biggest opportunity at this point and we are selling it as DJ Mahua and DJ Mahua Liqueur only in Goa right now,” says Nazareth. He calls his agave and sugarcane spirits (they retail under the names 100 per cent Agave, 51 per cent Agave, 51 per cent Agave Gold and Pure Cane) ‘field to bottle’ products, while mahua is the world’s first ‘forest to bottle’ distilled spirit.
Nazareth has always worked closely with locals and says, “Almost 95 per cent of the people working in the distillery are from surrounding villages and towns. We chose this remote area because it was close to the raw material and because I was particular about meeting environmental standards.” In addition to liaising with agave and sugarcane growers, he also works with an association of farmers in Nagpur to procure essential oils to make orange liqueurs. They plan to expand to newer markets in India and export to growing markets.