GINEOUS MASTERSTROKE

The team behind India’s first craft gin, Greater Than, likes to experiment and offer out-of-the-box beverages. While everyone was producing gins with Macedonian Juniper, they went off-track to craft one with Himalayan Juniper: Hapusa. Their No Sleep coffee gin had just gone on shelves when they surprised us with another masterstroke, ‘Broken Bat’. Founder, Anand Virmani, and his crew, had us believe that they were crowd-sourcing old, used bats to create a fence around their distillery. Instead, they turned them into chips, roasted them in their distiller’s home-oven, and rested their OG gin on them to create what the world had never seen before. Madhatters right? “Broken Bat, with its cricket connection, is globally relevant. We too thought of barrel ageing initially but then it wouldn’t have been unique. After tinkering with a ton of local woods, our cricket inspiration kicked in and we were bowled over. You remember the ad from a few World Cups ago? It said ‘Eat Cricket, Sleep Cricket’, now we’ve added ‘Drink Cricket’ to that as well”, says the proud creator.

This gin-meets-whisky sort of elixir has an alluring nose that fills you with nostalgia, simultaneously transporting you to Deodar-filled forests of Uttarakhand. It is smokey, leathery, tad savoury and spicy, while retaining its botanical spine. Guess what? Of the 24 crowd-sourced bats, five English Willow bats arrived from the UK and there might even be a limited release. The British brought us cricket, introduced us to gin, and now we’ll make it greater; ‘Lagaan’ encore eh? Nonetheless, Broken Bat will remain the unprecedented ode to India’s love for cricket in a bottle. Virmanisays consume it the way you enjoy your whisky–on ice, with soda, or water, even coke. I enjoyed it in a citrus-kissed, crisp Martini. Available in Goa at `1,650