威士忌日報

WASHINGTON — Early last year, Canadian provinces began pulling Kentucky bourbon and other American-produced liquor from government-run stores. It was retaliation for President Donald Trump’s tariffs on imports of steel, aluminum and other Canadian products. Since then, only two provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan, have lifted their bans. Now, President Trump is doubling down, announcing new 50% tariffs next month on many Canadian goods. “It’s only a response to the way they’ve treated our farmers and our people,” he said Tuesday. “Canada’s been very, very tough on us over the years.” “I think he should probably litigate all the tariffs he’s put in place already without congressional approval,” said Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Crescent Springs on Tuesday. “I mean, if he’s going to raise tariffs, it should come to a vote here.” A report in March by the Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S. says U.S. liquor exports to Canada dropped 70 percent, from $203 million from March to December 2024 to $60 million during the same time period in 2025, after Canadian provinces pulled American spirits from shelves. The council's president and CEO Chris Swonger said in a statement Monday: "Imposing a 50% tariff on imported spirits from Canada deepens trade tensions and raises the risk of further retaliation at a time when many U.S. hospitality businesses continue to face financial hardships. We encourage policymakers on both sides of the border to pursue a negotiated solution that restores market access for U.S. spirits and avoids further harm to the U.S. hospitality sector.” In response to the new tariffs, Michael Bilello, president and CEO of the American Whiskey Association, said in a statement Tuesday: “…we appreciate the Administration’s recognition that American producers have been unfairly denied meaningful access to one of our closest trading partners. At the same time, our goal is not escalation for the sake of escalation; that would be foolish and further damaging to a global industry already facing its most challenging times. Our goal is restored access. Additional tariffs risk deepening tensions and inviting further retaliation at a time when producers and hospitality businesses on both sides of the border need stability.”

- Pernod Ricard withdrew its Delhi High Court challenge against India's $314 million back tax demand. - The company will now pursue a statutory appeal with the tax authority instead. - India is Pernod's biggest market by volume, contributing about 10% of its global sales. French spirits company Pernod Ricard has withdrawn its court challenge against India's demand for $314 million in back taxes, according to a court order, adding a fresh turn to a four-year-long investigation, Reuters reported. Indian authorities had accused Pernod of undervaluing its Scotch whisky imports over several years, which allegedly helped the company pay lower tariffs than it should have. The tax demand was first issued in September last year, and Reuters had reported in May that the company was alleged to have hidden details about the composition of its whisky imports and the age of its blends, cutting down its 150% tariff liability. Pernod had gone to the Delhi High Court seeking to have the tax demand quashed, arguing that Indian authorities never shared the investigation data that could have helped the company defend itself. Court Case Withdrawn The Delhi High Court has now recorded that the case "is dismissed as withdrawn," according to an order released late on Monday. The order noted that Pernod chose to withdraw its court challenge in order to pursue a statutory appeal instead, a route that goes through the tax authority itself rather than the courts. It was not immediately clear why the company made this shift nine months after first approaching the court. The Indian government told the judges this week that it had no objection to Pernod's decision to withdraw the case, the order showed. Advertisement Anurag Ojha, the government counsel in the case, told Reuters that Pernod is now expected to file an appeal with a commissioner within the tax authority. What The Investigation Found According to the investigation, Pernod had "intentionally complicated" its disclosures by using new internal codenames for its malt whisky, which authorities said made it harder to detect the alleged undervaluation. Pernod has previously said it "rejects any suggestion of wrongdoing" and maintains confidence in its position, according to Reuters. India is Pernod Ricard's largest market by volume and accounts for roughly 10% of the group's global sales. If the company loses the case, the total payout, including penalties, could exceed $600 million, which would amount to a fifth of its $2.9 billion revenue in India last year and nearly three times its profit in the country. Advertisement The tax case adds to Pernod's regulatory troubles in India. The company is also contesting a separate antitrust case, along with a ban imposed by the Delhi government over alleged violations of liquor policy, both of which Pernod denies.

It’s the middle of August in 2002, the end of the summer in Glasgow, Scotland. One evening, as the sun starts to set, a 24-year-old Rakshit Jagdale makes his way into The Pot Still, a pub on 154 Hope St. Jagdale takes a seat at the far end of the long bar counter, trying not to look like he is watching too closely. Ken Storrie, the pub’s owner (who passed away in November 2010), has spent the day tasting a whisky Jagdale had brought him that afternoon. It was a single malt that was distilled in a place Storrie had never associated with good whisky. He liked it enough to test it out on others. Later that evening, as the bar fills in with the regulars, Storrie starts to pour for them Jagdale’s whisky and asks them to guess where it was from. They look at the colour, swirl it, nose it, and finally taste it. One says it is a 10-year-old Speyside. Another guesses a 12-year-old Irish. A third goes further: A 15-year-old whisky from Highland. Then Storrie tells them it came from Bengaluru, India. “They all had that expression—jaws dropping,” Jagdale recalls in a conversation with Forbes India. “We knew we made good whisky. But to have that stamp of approval from the Scots felt really good,” says the soft-spoken 48-year-old who now heads Amrut Distilleries. That evening pioneered a new category: Indian single malt, some of which now win top honours at international competitions once dominated by Scotch, Irish or Japanese whiskies. Amrut alone has accumulated more than 300 international awards—most recently five gold medals at the International Spirits Challenge 2024 in London, where it competed in the World Whisky category against entries from Scotland, Ireland and Japan. Amrut Fusion, still the brand’s flagship, won gold at ISC 2024. Growth has been equally striking in India, for the entire industry. Domestic volumes of malt Indian whisky grew at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32 percent between 2019 and 2025, according to IWSR, a global leader in beverage alcohol data and insight. The year-on-year (YoY) growth rate was 22 percent in 2024-25. Overseas, volumes expanded at a 24 percent CAGR over the same period, with 9 percent YoY growth in 2024-25. “There was a time when Indian whisky wasn’t even considered a category. There was Scotch, Irish, and Japanese. I think 2012-2015, things started to emerge and people started picking up on these whiskies,” says Sandeep Arora, founder of Spiritual Luxury Living, a spirits advisory and marketing firm. Amrut is the flagbearer of Indian whiskies, he says. What Amrut did in Glasgow in 2004 did not stay a one-brand story for long. Paul John followed in 2012-13. Rampur, from Radico Khaitan, came next. Piccadilly’s Indri arrived around 2019-2020 and has since become a breakout success. Other brands have followed. “We feel happy that we pioneered the category,” Jagdale says. His brand has a 35 percent share of the country’s single malt market. It does not have any private equity or outside investment. All capex is funded by internal accruals. Rakshit Jagdale, MD. Amrut Distilleries. Photo by Madhu Kapparath Different Beginnings Amrut’s story begins nowhere near single malts. In 1948, J N Radhakrishna Rao Jagdale set up a small blending and bottling unit on what was then the outskirts of Bangalore. The first product was Silver Cup Brandy, followed soon after by a rum, Amrut Triple X, that found a steady customer base in the Canteen Stores Department of the Indian armed forces from the early 1960s. The pivot began in 1972 when Radhakrishna’s son Neelakanta, Rakshit’s father, joined the family business and decided a blending-and-bottling company wasn’t enough. Amrut installed a small rectification column, began distilling grape brandy in 1975, and started distilling malt whisky around 1979-80, years before anyone in the company was thinking about single malt. The reason was practical: Amrut needed matured malt whisky to blend into its own blended whisky portfolio. The 1990s complicated things. Liberalisation opened up India’s markets and multinational spirits companies moved in fast. Seagram’s launched Royal Stag—a lighter whisky, made with grain rather than molasses, and free of the heavier blended-malt content that brands like Amrut’s own Macintosh carried. It reset consumer taste. “Consumers began to move towards lighter whiskies,” Jagdale recalls. “They could have two or three pegs and get up the next morning without a hangover.” Amrut’s answer to dealing with the challenge was to not only keep distilling but also begin using less malt. “The real change in Amrut’s business happened when my father joined. The actual concept of premiumisation was started by him in the 1970s,” Jagdale says. It would take half a century and a pandemic for that trend to really take off in India. “The desire for higher quality drinks at premium prices thrived during the Covid pandemic,” according to an IWSR report from 2022. “Restricted from going out to their favourite restaurants and bars, consumers around the world spent their discretionary budgets on luxury experiences they could bring into the home, such as… make-at-home cocktails and sophisticated wines and spirits.” A women-led workforce mans the bottling section at the Amrut distillery near Bengaluru. Photo courtesy Amrut Next Blend Rakshit Jagdale joined the family business in 1999 and spent two years learning the operation before his father sent him to Newcastle University in England for an MBA. He wanted to pursue something in logistics and supply chain. His father had a different idea. “He said, ‘why do you want to do a theoretical project? Why don’t you look at whether there is scope for marketing an Indian single malt whisky in Indian restaurants in Great Britain?’” It was less a market-research assignment, more a real-world experiment with the family’s own liquid. Miniature samples of matured Amrut malt were shipped to the UK. Jagdale spent a good part of 2002 working the pub circuit in Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham and London. He would cold-introduce himself to pub owners and drinkers and ask whether they would try an Indian single malt. His father’s contacts helped open other doors. Most people were surprised to learn there was an Indian single malt and equally surprised at how much they liked it. The Pot Still tasting, sometime around August 2002, gave Jagdale the confidence that it could be more than an academic exercise. He took his financials and his findings back to the family board and started the third innings for Amrut. The brand launched India’s first indigenously distilled, matured and bottled single malt whisky not in Bangalore, not in Mumbai, but in an Indian restaurant called Cafe India in Glasgow, on August 24, 2004. It would be six more years before a bottle was sold in India. That wasn’t an oversight; it was Neelakanta Rao Jagdale’s business strategy. “My father was very clear. He did not want to launch it in India first. He wanted the accolades globally and launch in India later, once word-of-mouth got around.” It was not easy. The EU’s standard bottle size was 700 ml against India’s 750 ml. Indian glass manufacturing in the mid-2000s was not yet producing bottles to the quality export markets expected. Amrut sourced its glass from the UK for years before Indian glassmakers caught up. It took close to two years to get packaging fully compliant. From the UK, the brand moved into France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Belgium and Denmark by the end of 2004, into Canada by 2007-08, and into the United States—now the company’s single largest export market, ahead of the EU and UK—by 2011. Spirit of India If the Pot Still tasting was Amrut’s proof of concept, the moment that turned it into a business was 2010, when the world-renowned whisky critic Jim Murray scored Amrut Fusion 97 out of 100 and named it the third finest single malt whisky in the world. “That particular recognition turned the tide,” Jagdale recalls. It was also the ye

French spirits maker Pernod Ricard has withdrawn its legal challenge against India’s demand for $314 million (around Rs 2,700 crore) in back taxes over alleged undervaluation of Scotch whisky imports and will instead pursue the statutory appeals process, according to a Delhi High Court order. The dispute, one of the company’s biggest regulatory challenges in India, relates to allegations that Pernod undervalued imported Scotch whisky over several years, resulting in lower customs duty payments. Indian authorities had issued the tax demand in September 2025 following a four-year investigation. Pernod had approached the Delhi High Court seeking to quash the demand, arguing that tax authorities failed to provide key investigation documents that were necessary for the company to defend its case. However, in an order released on Monday, the Delhi High Court noted that Pernod had withdrawn its petition to “avail statutory alternative remedy of appeal,” meaning the company will now challenge the tax demand through the prescribed appellate mechanism under Indian tax laws. The tax dispute is among the most significant legal issues facing Pernod Ricard in India, which contributes around 10 per cent of the company’s global sales and is its largest market by volume. Apart from the tax case, the maker of Chivas Regal whisky and Absolut Vodka is also dealing with an antitrust investigation and a separate sales ban in New Delhi linked to alleged liquor policy violations, allegations that the company has denied. Quick Reads View AllNeither Pernod Ricard nor Indian tax authorities immediately responded to requests for comment. First Published: July 21, 2026, 15:40 IST

Glenfarclas has added a historic chapter to the distillery’s story. The Glenfarclas 70 Year Old is the oldest single malt the Speyside distillery has ever officially released. This remarkably mature whisky spent more than seven decades resting in the Glenfarclas warehouses in Scotland. That makes it one of the rarest releases the Scotch distillery has ever bottled. Exceptionally old Glenfarclas whisky from the original maltings To be precise, the whisky hails from Warehouse No. 8 at the distillery. This warehouse once formed part of the original maltings and was already in use when the spirit was distilled around 70 years ago. Across its long maturation in sherry casks, the whisky bridged six generations at the distillery and ultimately came under the care of distillery manager Callum A. Fraser. With a 70-year age statement, this release surpasses all previous official Glenfarclas bottlings by age, marking a new milestone. Glenfarclas is renowned for long-aged single malts and its commitment to traditional maturation methods. The taste of Glenfarclas 70 Year Old is still under wraps Glenfarclas 70 Year Old has been announced with detailed tasting notes. We’ve listed them for you below: - Nose: Rich aromas of stewed fruits, dark chocolate, treacle toffee, and a subtle hint of Speyside peat. - Palate: Full-bodied and complex with deep fruit tones, creamy chocolate, sweet toffee, and a refined, gentle smokiness. - Finish: Long, layered, and deeply satisfying, as the sweet and delicately smoky notes fade away. The whisky is bottled at 42.9 percent alcohol by volume (ABV). Where can you buy Glenfarclas 70 Year Old? Glenfarclas 70 Year Old has been released worldwide through a select network of specialist whisky retailers. Only 262 bottles of this exclusive single malt are available, making stocks extremely limited. The retail price is around 24,000 euros per bottle. FAQ - When was Glenfarclas founded? Glenfarclas was founded in 1836 and has been owned by the Grant family since 1865. The distillery is one of the few Scotch whisky producers still wholly family-owned. - What is Glenfarclas known for? Glenfarclas is best known for its traditionally matured Speyside single malts in high-quality sherry casks. The distillery regularly releases older whiskies with age statements of 15, 21, 25, 30, and even 40 years or more. - What makes Glenfarclas special? Glenfarclas blends traditional craftsmanship with independent family stewardship. The distillery maintains extensive reserves of mature whisky, allowing it to release rare and very old bottlings on a regular basis.