Stranger & Sons gin maker: Wanted to make sure any brand we launch would take cocktail culture ahead in India

Rahul Mehra (right) is one of three co-founders of Goa-based Third Eye Distillery, which makes Stranger & Sons gin and owns majority stake in mixer brand Svami and bar consultancy Countertop.

2022 has been an eventful year for Goa-based Third Eye Distillery, which makes Stranger & Sons gin. The first eight months  have seen the four-year-old company, which was founded by Sakshi Saigal, Vidur Gupta and Rahul Mehra, acquire majority stakes in bar consultancy Countertop India and in craft tonics and mixers brand Svami, which is owned by Foxtrot Beverages. In August, the same month in which it picked up the 51% stake in Svami, Third Eye Distillery also launched the French rum brand Plantation, and Short Story, a new portfolio of white spirits, consisting of a triple-distilled vodka, a pot-distilled London dry gin, and a rum.

In an interview, Mehra spokes to Moneycontrol about the genesis of Short Story, building a portfolio of imported brands, and taking cocktail culture ahead in India.

What is the idea behind the launch of Short Story and what do you hope to achieve with it?

When you look at countries such as the USA, UK, and Australia, all of them have these few homegrown brands that have established themselves as benchmarks for the region. These are brands that reduce dependency on imported products and are contextual to the region as well. About 18 months ago, we acted on our belief that such a benchmark for distilling, at least across white spirits, didn’t exist in India. Where, for example, is the benchmark Indian vodka? Or, take London Dry gin—there are very few people in that space as well. The same goes for rum. India hasn’t seen a white rum apart from Bacardi in the last two-odd decades. Short Story, then, has a specific need gap to fill and that is to ensure it sets some level of baseline or benchmark of dependability for high-quality spirits coming from India.

With Countertop, Svami and now Short Story, it would seem that one of your goals is to help the cocktail culture in India take wing?

When we established Third Eye, our objective was to make sure that any brand we launch or any alignments we make would pretty much take cocktail culture in India ahead. That’s pretty much how we began our journey. Stranger & Sons was designed to be a brand that represented the contextual India, and it was a product that proved that India can make some solid products. The validation was not just global, but it also came from both Indian consumers and bartenders. And that’s something we are constantly working towards.

You have often spoken about creating a portfolio of imported brands to fill gaps in the beverage landscape. That’s where Plantation comes in, but you also have plans to launch “global standard bars” in India.

The Indian spirits landscape – the world’s third largest by volume – is largely dominated by two major players. We believe there are tons of brands out there that are independent and not aligned with any of the big houses, which Indians should have access to. That lack of access is because India has a complicated landscape, and two, the large players have no interest in bringing them down unless they have an alignment with them. So, we figured that there is definitely a whole part of the conversation missing. The fact that a rum as basic as Plantation not being available to Indians sounded silly to us. Plantation is a fairly well-known brand. They own seven distilleries in the Caribbean and have a massive footprint in southeast Asia. We will be constantly evaluating more brands that can be added to our imported portfolio.

Plantation 3 Stars with tiki mug

Coming to your question on bars, Countertop started as a company that was into enhancing bar culture as well as into consulting with bars and brands. That is something we are keen on working towards – not just to partner with third-party brands, but to also hopefully create our own bars at some point. We are a beverage and spirits company, but food and beverages is kind of our stage as well. So, every time we feel that a certain kind of bar doesn’t exist in India, we’d take a good look at creating something like it.

What kind of bars don’t exist in India?

Take tiki bars, for instance, there is no tiki bar in, say, Mumbai, or in India. There is also no real dive bar in India, where a certain newer generation can go. Of course, we have our own  culture of dive bars which we find extremely exciting, but we also want to make dive bars accessible to a different audience.