Khukri goes premium with new rum

Khukri Rum is one of Nepal’s most iconic brands, and is now launching a new Cask Series premium product to sell in Nepal and abroad.

The Cask Series Smoked Finish Khukri Rum is a limited edition sipping rum with only about 5,200 bottles made for export and rum connoisseurs in Nepal. Each bottle is numbered and will mention the cask from which it is derived.

“We are taking a classic Nepali liquor to a premium, luxury rum category. Each Cask Series flavour line will only be produced once,” explains Shuvash Lamichhane, General Manager of The Nepal Distilleries that first started making Khukri rum in 1959 in Balaju and has never stopped.

Fermented from molasses in the Tarai after the annual sugarcane harvest, the rum is matured for at least eight months during distillation. The distillery bottles the classic Khukri XXX, Coronation Khukri XXX, Khukri White Rum and Khukri Spiced Rum.

It is now adding this limited edition of the Cask Series. While the original rum is stored in huge wooden vats, the rum used for this more exclusive line is in smaller casks made from oak or sal, with charred insides that give the rum a smoky, smoother flavour.

The Cask Series rum is indeed smokier than the classic, while the spiced rum tastes toasty and mostly of cardamom. These flavours are carefully crafted by blenders and tasters who have to pass regular palate tests.

The packaging for the Cask Series is as special as the process. A sturdy patterned box that opens up to a black glass bottle with gold lettering, and an indication of which cask the rum is from. These are then shipped to premium customers around the world

One of the reasons this is the more expensive premium line is because the casks are smaller than the vats and the blenders reject more than half of the rum in the casks when the aging period is complete. The trick for the blender is also to decide when to take the rum out of the cask. Says Lamichhane: “If we have 25 casks, only ten might match the flavour profile for a certain series.”

Over the decades, The Nepal Distilleries has created and maintained a brand that feels quintessentially Nepali, and serves as Nepal’s ‘ambassador’ with exports to Germany, Korea, Belgium, Finland, the Czech Republic, besides the existing markets among Nepalis in the US, UK, Hong Kong and Australia.

Its unique khukri shaped bottle first introduced for King Birendra’s coronation in 1975 has been a collector’s item. The bottle and rum have been a staple for Nepalis and visitors to take as gifts when they leave the country, and is used as decoration on bar tables around the world. Now, nearly 40 years later, even that bottle will soon be getting a makeover with a sharper design and sleeker handle.

“Our bottle design has always been instantly recognisable,” says Lamichhane.

The Himalayan restaurant at The Hague, for example, has a Khukri Coronation bottle adorning its bar. In Washington DC, Himalayan Heritage Restaurant & Bar offers a ‘Nepalese Khukri Rum’ mojito with fresh mint, soda water, lime juice and sugar syrup, for $12.

A distinct element of the award-winning classic Khukri rum is its 'modern auburn' colour from caramel sourced from cooking sugar and blended with the raw rum. The spirits are then stored in a warehouse with floor-to-ceiling vats which are not just for storage, as the wood imparts flavour into the rum, and removes a lot of the harshness.  

On a visit this week, the bottling room was just about to begin for the day and the production line was churning out different shapes and sizes of Khukri bottles. Most of the process is automated, including screwing bottle caps, sticking labels, placing the government seal, and packaging. The only manual intervention is quality control where bottles are held against the light to check for sediment and colour.