Specialist Indian beverage retailer Maharaja Drinks has launched ‘category first’ agave spirit Ayam in the UK.
Ayam is the brainchild of Indian drinks industry veteran Desmond Nazareth. It is produced by DesmondJi, which claims to be India’s first craft distillery and the only manufacturer in Asia to distill agave spirits.
The spirit is made with 100% agave americana, sourced from India’s Deccan plateau and distilled in small batches. It is available now via Maharaja Drinks’ DTC platform (rsp: £36/75cl).
The Deccan plateau shares latitude with agave-producing regions in Mexico, as well as a similar terroir. This made it “the perfect environment for agave to thrive”, Maharaja Drinks said.
With sales of tequila and mezcal in UK supermarkets growing by 15% to £46.1m [NIQ 52 we 10 August 2024], the launch of Ayam Agave would tap interest in agave-based spirits in the UK, Maharaja Drinks predicted.
“We have been thinking about this category for some time now, and with agave spirits like tequila, mezcal, raicilla, and sotol gaining interest for 2025, it felt right to help give Indian agave a global stage this year,” said Maharaja Drinks co-founder Ipe Jacob.
However, it was “important to find a person or product” that embodied Maharaja Drinks’ core values of “sustainability, pioneering spirit, and incredible taste”, Jacob said.
Sustainability is high on the agenda at DesmondJi, which uses fibrous waste matter produced from milling agave as fuel in the boilers that cook the agave hearts (piñas) and those used to distil the spirit.
The distillery wastewater is treated to make it suitable for ferti-irrigation, while solar energy powers the electrical equipment used on site.
“We are thrilled to bring Ayam Agave to the UK market,” Jacob added.
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