India's Johnnie Walker cult

With the news that India is about to drop tariffs on Scotch whisky as part of a trade deal, I look at what this might mean for the subcontinent's most revered booze brand.

While the Scotch whisky industry often seems a bit embarrassed by the Highland or imperial tropes used to sell its products in the past, India has no such qualms. The bestselling Indian whiskies are called things like Royal Stag, Imperial Blue and Officer's Choice. It's like the Raj never ended. Indians drink a lot of real Scotch whisky too. In 2023 India overtook France to become the largest market for Scotch whisky in terms of volume according to the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) importing $218 million worth of Scotch whisky despite the fact that there was a 150% tariff on Scotch whisky.

Well, no longer. A trade deal has just been announced between India and Scotland after three years of negotiations which should have Scotch whisky distillers partying responsibly on the streets of Dufftown. It’s a rare bit of good news for an industry that has laid down far too much stock in a market that is now declining. William Wemyss managing director of Wemyss Family Spirits and owner of Kingsbarns single malt distillery near St Andrews commented:

"The phased reduction of tariffs, from an immediate cut from 150% to 75%, with a target of 40% over the next decade, changes everything. It finally gives us a fairer footing to compete in a market that has been out of reach for too long.”

Rather than single malts, however, it’s likely that the big winner will be blends, especially Johnnie Walker. The subcontinent has a very long and deep relationship with Scotch. Johnnie Walker had agents in British India which Dr. Nicholas Morgan, who wrote a history of the company called A Long Stride, described as "James Bond-type figures, smooth, smart and could drink you under the table." The officers and sahibs would have drunk Johnnie Walker and other premium brands while the locals drank cheaper whiskies. Officer's Choice, the largest spirits brand in the world, plays on these connotations.

Following independence and partition in 1947, Johnnie Walker became a cult among ordinary Indians despite, or maybe because of, the high tariffs slapped on the product. Today a bottle of Black Label will cost around $30 in America but at least $75 in India, often more, as the various states of India have their complicated systems of tariffs. No Indian wedding is complete without a bottle of Johnnie Walker on each table, with some splashing out on the top-of-the-range Blue Label which could cost up to $500. It's about conspicuous consumption. Now with the reduction in tariffs, Black Label should come down to under $55 a bottle.

Those who have never even had so much of a sniff Johnnie Walker know the brand as 'Uncle Johnnie' and, according to Indian drinks consultant Ruchira Neotia, everyone has an opinion about it in the way they might about the country's cricket team. It's such a part of the culture that the late Indian actor Badruddin Jamaluddin Kazi (above) changed his name to Johnnie Walker. He was famous for playing drunks though as an observant Muslim he never touched a drop.

Seth Thevoz who writes the excellent Clubland Substack told me that many clubs in India have a lifesize Johnnie Walker ‘striding man.’ The photo above is from the bar of Delhi’s Gymkhana Club.

Even in Pakistan, Johnnie Walker is freely available for the right price. Pakistani-American musician Basim Usmani said Black Label was "a more important Western import than trains, so-called secularism, or 'democracy.'" While veteran American journalist Seymour Hersh reminisced about his time in Pakistan where the "military officers, politicians, and journalists routinely served Johnnie Walker Black during our talks, and drank it themselves."

Scotch whisky is also huge among the subcontinent’s diaspora. Indians and especially Sikhs are prominent in the British spirits industry. The Whisky Exchange, the country's biggest online drinks retailer, was founded by two Sikh brothers from Hanwell in West London, Sukhinder and Rajbir Singh, before they sold it to Pernod Ricard in 2021.

While the Scots are rejoicing, what does this mean for India’s own giant spirits industry? The country's domestic products are fast improving. In the past, they were made from imported malt whisky from Scotland diluted with molasses-based spirit, so they were not allowed to be sold as whisky in Britain, Europe or America, but now the country is producing increasingly good single malts often with the help of Scottish consultants like Charlie Smith, formerly of Diageo. He's also my uncle and mentioned to me how good the whisky was these days even though health and safety standards still left much to be desired.

The country has a whisky heritage richer than Japan's. In 1855 Edward Abraham Dyer founded Kasauli distillery in Himachal Pradesh in Northern India. The company behind Rampur single malt was founded in 1943 while Amrut was founded in 1948.

It was Amrut that first showed the world that Indian whisky had come of age when it launched its single malt in Glasgow in 2004. There's a brave place to launch a non-Scottish whisky. The watershed moment came in 2010 when Jim Murray's Whisky Bible named Amrut Fusion as the third-best whisky in the world. It's been joined by brands such as Rampur in Bangalore, Paul John in Goa and most controversially Indri. This last brand comes from Piccadilly Distillers, a company owned by Siddharth Sharma who was imprisoned in 1999 for shooting dead Jessica Lal, a barmaid who refused to serve him a drink. He is now planning to build a distillery in Scotland.

There are now whisky distilleries all over the country from the baking heat of the south where the whisky matures six times faster than in Scotland to the cool of Kashmir and the Himalayas. According to Ipe Jacob, who runs Maharaja Drinks importing the finest Indian produce to Britain, previously "everything foreign-branded was considered superior," but this is beginning to change as Indian whisky drinkers wake up to the quality of domestic products.

Even with the lowered tariff, Scotch whisky will remain much more expensive than the domestic product but that is part of the appeal for Indian customers. In fact, the big question is when Scotch whisky prices drop, will it actually lose some of that cachet?

A very different version of this article appeared in the Spectator earlier this year. If you want to know more about India and Scotch whisky - listen to this Intoxicating History podcast.