Episode 273 - Michael D’Souza on Indian whisky

My pleasure, David.

Tell us about your own journey first.

Tell us about how you got into making whiskey in India.

I started my career in the alcohol industry way back in 93.

That is 1993.

I started as an intern, then called National Distilleries.

So I started working under... a chief blender so those days national distilleries were into making blended whiskies i worked as an assistant blender until say 1998 so as the the volume increased as the company grew uh mr paul p john he decided to take a distillery on lease.

This is where I started getting into distillation.

So in India, we have two different types of distilleries.

One is called primary distillation wherein you produce alcohol out of base ingredients.

It could be grain or molasses.

The other one is redistillation wherein you produce rectified spirit out of grain and molasses and then you redistill it.

So initially it was redistillation.

So I started working at the redistillation unit wherein we used to produce close to 30,000 liters every day.

So this continued until 2021.

Then again, Mr. Paul decided to increase the capacity and we took one more distillery that is primary distillation on lease.

At this time, he promoted me as a distillery manager.

This is where I started learning the art of fermentation and distillation.

This is way back in 2001.

This was a molasses based distillery wherein we used to distill close to 100,000 liters.

My learning started in 2001 with respect to distillation and fermentation.

This happened until 2006.

In 2006, I was given the opportunity to learn winemaking as well.

The company decided to send me to Italy to learn winemaking.

I came back and we started a brand called Big Banyan.

My pleasure, David.

Tell us about your own journey first.

Tell us about how you got into making whiskey in India.

I started my career in the alcohol industry way back in 93.

That is 1993.

I started as an intern, then called National Distilleries.

So I started working under... a chief blender so those days national distilleries were into making blended whiskies i worked as an assistant blender until say 1998 so as the the volume increased as the company grew uh mr paul p john he decided to take a distillery on lease.

This is where I started getting into distillation.

So in India, we have two different types of distilleries.

One is called primary distillation wherein you produce alcohol out of base ingredients.

It could be grain or molasses.

The other one is redistillation wherein you produce rectified spirit out of grain and molasses and then you redistill it.

So initially it was redistillation.

So I started working at the redistillation unit wherein we used to produce close to 30,000 liters every day.

So this continued until 2021.

Then again, Mr. Paul decided to increase the capacity and we took one more distillery that is primary distillation on lease.

At this time, he promoted me as a distillery manager.

This is where I started learning the art of fermentation and distillation.

This is way back in 2001.

This was a molasses based distillery wherein we used to distill close to 100,000 liters.

My learning started in 2001 with respect to distillation and fermentation.

This happened until 2006.

In 2006, I was given the opportunity to learn winemaking as well.

The company decided to send me to Italy to learn winemaking.

I came back and we started a brand called Big Banyan.