Dark Knight: This whiskey from the North-East is made of 100% corn

Radiant Manufacturers' distillery in KhatKhati, in Karbi Anglong, produces over 50,000 litres of grain neutral spirit per day.

Nagaland is among the biggest producers of maize in India. In fact, the cereal crop clocks in second after rice, and is grown in nearly every district in the state. You can do a lot of things with corn, and that includes making whisky. That is what Vicky Chand did towards late 2019 in Assam with the launch of Castle Hill Dark Knight, a 100% corn whiskey. But then along came the pandemic and everything went hush, including work on launching it in more states. Chand intends to attend to the unfinished business this year, and his corn whiskey – a 2YO and a 4YO – will be available in Maharashtra and Goa by March this year. The whiskey retails for Rs 1,200 (2YO) and Rs 1550 (4YO) in Assam.

Vicky Chand (above)

Chand runs Radiant Manufacturers, one of North-East India’s biggest distilleries. The Chands began small with a liquor store in Dimapur in the early 1970s. Today, they have a distillery in KhatKhati, in Karbi Anglong, which produces over 50,000 litres of grain neutral spirit per day, and two bottling plants in the state. The distillery is only a stone’s throw from Assam’s border with Nagaland, which went ‘dry’ in 1989 with a liquor prohibition act.

The Americans have been making corn whiskey for over 300 years, and corn defines a lot of American whiskey. Bourbon, ‘America’s Native Spirit’, is made with at least 51 percent corn in the mash bill, and you’ll also find both 100 percent corn whiskeys such as Balcones Baby Blue as well as high corn bourbons in America. In the United States, the legal definition of corn whiskey is a spirit with a fermented mash of at least 80 percent corn and if aged, it must be done in used or uncharred oak barrels (unlike bourbon which is aged in charred new oak barrels).

Dark Knight is aged in charred new oakwood casks and filtered through bamboo charcoal. Chand, who is a big fan of Jim Beam, describes his whiskey as just ‘Small Batch’ on the bottle, and calls it a tribute to bourbon. Work on the whisky began some eight years ago with help from John MacDougall, a master distiller, who has made whisky and managed distilleries across Scotland and in the United States. “We set up a maturation unit and began experimenting with grain spirits made from both broken rice and corn, and with the corn whiskey we liked what we saw and tasted,” says Chand. The 4YO whiskey is an agreeable libation on the rocks: oily and buttery, and smooth, with a slightly spicy finish.

4-year-old Castle Hill Dark Knight.

Dark Knight is just one part of the “ecosystem he is trying to build”, says Chand. The other parts of the ecosystem include casks and a push towards premiumisation. “Internationally, you have ex-bourbon casks which go to Scotland and which are then used by scotch whisky distilleries… With Dark Knight, I’m aiming to do something similar. We use new American oak for Dark Knight, and in a way, we are creating casks that could potentially be used by other distilleries,” says Chand. “That’s part of the game-plan for the future.”

Also on the agenda is the launch of both a single malt and a blended whisky. The former, a double-barrel whisky, has been aged in both ex-bourbon and ex-Dark Knight casks. (Radiant sources its malt spirit from Dewans in Jammu, but is expected to start work on making its own soon). The blended whisky will be a global whisky, says Chand, “a blend of the Jammu malts, our grain whisky, and some Scotch malts.”