Distilled once for Urrak, twice for Feni

Traditionally, Urrack is served with salt, lime juice, a slit chilli and topped with soda. (Photo courtesy: Chef Oishik Neogy, Roboto)

Artist and hotel owner Justino Lobo exhorts visitors to hide their car and bike keys, as he stirs the salt and lime juice into urrack, tops it with Limca and soda, and places a slit green chilli on the rim of the glass, as if the chilli were riding it.

But what do bike and car keys have to do with firewater?

Lobo says it's to keep the breeze out of the equation: after drinking the fruity urrack, you never know when a gust of summer breeze will mix with the alcohol and turn you tipsy.

“It is the breeze that gives the sway, that famed tiddly sway of the urrack,” Lobo explains.

The breeze certainly is tricky. But it is possible to have a fool-proof jungle juice (that’s what locals call urrack) moment in Goa. Pick a pretty summer afternoon between April and May, pour an urrack, sit in an easy chair in the balcao (balcony), munch a handful of bhingta (monkey nuts) and then let the salubrious breeze lull you to sleep.

But quaff the jungle juice only till May. As soon as the first raindrops pitter-patter on the leaves, bid adieu to the urrack. Having urrack in the rainy season is considered sacrilege under Goan tipple traditions. “If you have had urrack in April-May, rest assured that you will not catch rain-induced cold between June and August,” Lobo, who owns Dona Eliza hotel in Calangute, repeats an old-adage.

No one in the state doubts the goodness of this local drink distilled from fermented cashew apples but its spelling is a raging debate. Meaning ‘fresh’, urrack is spelt variously as urrak, urrack, urak, urrac. In Roadmap for the Development of Feni: A Plan of Action (2014), Goa’s jungle juice is spelt as urrac. According to the official website of Goa’s Department of Excise, this first distillate of cashew feni should have 23-30 alcohol %v/v (alcohol by volume) calibrated at 29 degrees Celsius (compare it with 40-45.5 v/v for Cashew Feni & Coconut feni).

The hilly areas of Sattari, Bicholim, Canacona, Quepem, Tiswadi and Sanguem are famous for making urrack which is still distilled using traditional tools and method. While wine is aged in wooden barrels, urrack is rested in vintage gigantic glass-blown bottles called garrafãoes.

In the beginning, urrack was considered a poor man’s drink. Available cheap and unlabelled, it was guzzled neat or with guddi soda (local soda sealed with a glass marble) for those who wanted an extra zing. “In olden times, urrack was also used as a stomach cleanser. But nothing was added to it, just half of a Kopie (a 2-inch glass) for those aged 16 and above,” says Maendra Jocelino Araujo Alvares, founder of the Big Foot Museum in Loutolim (South Goa). In Big Foot, artist Alvares has created dioramas of the ancient methods of cashew feni distillation.

In recent years, the status of urrack has changed from a poor man’s intoxicant to a hip bevvy. Local restaurants are experimenting with the drink that is only available between late-March and May.

Urrack cocktails at Roboto, Goa. (Photo courtesy: Chef Oishik Neogy, Roboto)

Roboto restaurant in Calangute is having an Urrack Festival until the end of the season and is serving four urrack cocktails: Jungle Juice (urrack with salt, lime juice, green chilli topped with limca and soda); Mutto Sour (urrack with cucumber pickle brine topped with pineapple); Mogache (urrack with passion fruit syrup, lime juice, mango liqueur and jalapeño); and blossom (urrack with infused soda, house-made berry concoction and topped with soda), at Rs 300 each.

Anumitra Ghosh Dastidar and Shalini Krishan, owners of Edible Archives (Anjuna Mapusa Road), have created a bimli-urrack craft cocktail which is made using fresh bimli juice, ginger juice and urrack, with a chilli-salt rim and served chilled.

“We took inspiration from the traditional urrack accompaniments of Limca, green chilli and salt, but wanted to use fresh, local ingredients instead of a bottled drink. Locally grown bimli (a local sour fruit also known as bimla or bimbli) gives the sweet-sour notes, while ginger, salt and chilli add some complexity to the strong taste of the urrack. We source our urrack from deep in the interiors of Goa,” Krishnan said.

Poet T.S. Elliot had called April the cruellest month “breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory with desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.” In Goa, April is the month of urrack, mixing happiness and stirring a summer afternoon with lime juice, soda, salt and slit green chilli. Saúde (Cheers).

Urrack is the first distillate of the cashew apple juice (Photo: Preeti Verma Lal)

Good to know

In 2010, Time magazine included feni in its list of 10 Ridiculously Strong Drinks

The word cashew is derived from caju, the Portuguese name for the fruit. Caju stems from the indigenous Tupian name acajú, literally meaning ‘nut that produces itself’

Anacardium occidentale is the botanical name of the cashew tree, which was first brought into India by the Portuguese nearly 500 years ago

Anacardium occidentale is a false fruit - not a fruit but a swollen stalk with the nut

The word Feni is derived from the Sanskrit word phena and Konkani fenn meaning froth.

Perhaps the earliest mention of coconut feni (much older than cashew feni) is found in Itenerario, a 1584 journal of Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, a Dutch merchant, historian, spy, and trader who lived in Goa between 1583 and 1587.

Legally, the cashew tree cannot be shaken for fruit, only fallen apples can be picked.

In ancient times, ginger feni was considered the best remedy for a cough; cumin feni was used for stomach trouble, the Losün (garlic) expression of Feni was given to those with heart ailments while Dukshiri feni helped in reducing the intensity of the Dukh (pain/ache) - body aches, muscle or joints, according to Hansel Vaz, owner, Fazenda Cazulo.

A Goan tavern scene, by cartoonist Mario Miranda (Courtesy: Orlando Noronha, CIPA, Goa)