Meet the former banker who just launched her first rum

Maka Zai white and gold.

The world’s best rums come from the tropics, so Kasturi Banerjee has a point when she says that India, which is also among the largest producers of sugarcane, should ideally be making more — good — rum. If we were to get over our bias towards Old Monk, there really is no standout homegrown rum. Banerjee, though, is doing her bit to remedy the situation.

Earlier this week, the former banker, who set up Stilldistilling Spirits in Goa about two years ago, launched Maka Zai rum. The Maka Zai duo — white and gold — are priced at Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,300 in Goa, and Banerjee claims that they could fill in the yawning gap between Old Monk and, say, Ron Zacapa in the Indian rum market. The molasses for Maka Zai (Konkani for ‘I want’) come from northern and western India, and the spirit is blended and bottled in Goa.

Banerjee’s first love is whisky, especially Irish whiskey and the blended kind, and she is fairly popular on social media as @women_who_whiskey. “My love for whisky and exposure to different kinds of spirits happened because of my job, and I’m glad for it. It introduced me to a whole different world that I liked to inhabit,” says Banerjee who worked with Standard Chartered Bank across Asia for more than 16 years before, finally, making a very un-banker-like move into the world of spirits in 2018.

Over the last couple of years, she has attended various courses on spirits and bartending, and, among others, mixed drinks at events and conducted whisky tasting sessions for the likes of Paul John.

Kasturi Banerjee with colleagues Anurag Bhatnagar and Abhirup Bhattacharya.

“I quite enjoyed bartending but I was not sure if I wanted to do it all the time. My goal, so to speak, was to create something out of the things I’d learnt about alcohol and distilling.” Thankfully, Banerjee didn’t want to something with botanicals.

“I first thought about creating a rum about two years ago, just as the craze for gin was ebbing in the West and rum was slowly taking over. I must have spoken to tons of people in the industry, and there definitely was potential for a well-made rum in the Indian market.”

Banerjee says she wanted to approximate the smoothness of Caribbean rums with Maka Zai. “I see it as a smooth drink that you can sit back with if you are not already using it in a cocktail. The white is a ‘Bartender’s Edition’ and medium bodied but vibrant and refreshing. The gold, which features rum blended for two and a half years, is creamier, slightly fruity, and makes for a great sipping rum,” says Banerjee.

My goal, so to speak, was to create something out of the things I’d learnt about alcohol and distilling.

-Kasturi Banerjee

Basu, who recently sampled Maka Zai, is especially impressed by the gold rum and said it was “light and bold” and reminded her of a young Appleton. “But creating a good rum is different from creating and growing a brand. Desmondji’s cachaca-style Pure Cane, for example, is an excellent product, but it’s only available in Goa. Plus, you’ve got to have consistent control over the distilling process. Maka Zai seems to have got off to a good start, and I’m hoping it paves the way for more good rums in India.”

(Murali K Menon works on content strategy at HaymarketSAC. )