Only Whiskey Distillery in Muslim World Defies Prohibition
By SLOBODAN LEKIC
AP
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (Dec. 6) - The dusty, traffic-choked streets of this sprawling Pakistani metropolis are a world away from the crisp mountain streams and heather-covered glens normally associated with single-malt whiskeys.
But it’s here in dusty Rawalpindi that the only malt whiskey distillery in the Muslim world is preparing to launch its newest product - a 21-year single malt that it claims will rival the best Scotch whisky.
“Very few distilleries anywhere in the world, even the high-end ones in Scotland, produce … 21-year old malts,” said M.P. Bhandara, chief executive of the Murree Brewing Company, announcing the launch of the new product, which goes on sale in January.
The new spirit, Murree’s Millennium Reserve, will only be available to a small clientele of expatriates and non-Muslims in a land where prohibition has been enforced for 30 years. The distillery’s product lines - including 8- and 12-year-old single malts - cannot be sampled abroad because Islamabad bans the export of alcoholic beverages.
There are only three licensed producers of alcoholic drinks in Pakistan: the Murree Brewery, and distilleries in the cities of Quetta and Karachi.
Largely because of the strong religious lobby that opposes sale and consumption of alcohol, the government has granted only one new producer’s license - the Karachi distillery’s - since the creation of Pakistan in 1947. The other two were set up before the partition of the subcontinent independence from Britain.
Legally, only Pakistan’s non-Muslim minority, 5 percent of its 150 million people, can get a permit that allows them to buy liquor for home consumption.
But alcohol is available to Muslims in secret black-market sales with a significant markup. This can be risky business, because drinking alcohol is punishable by caning and three years in jail.
The Murree Brewer is a legacy of British colonial rule, set up in 1860 in the hill station of Murree to provide beer for the British troops.
Since then it has shared the subcontinent’s tumultuous history.
In 1935, a branch in the city of Quetta was flattened by an earthquake, and in 1947 production ceased completely after rioters burned down the historic compound in Murree during the subcontinent’s violent partition into Pakistan and India. The company’s head office in Rawalpindi - across the road from the brewery - was taken over by the government in 1959 and now houses the army chief, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. In 1979, U.S.-backed military dictator Gen. Zia ul-Haq hanged the prime minister he ousted, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, just a few hundred yards from the brewery’s front gate.
The company not only survived against the odds, but with a work force of more than 400 people - mostly Muslims not allowed to sample their own products - it has become one of Pakistan’s best-performing stocks.
In the 1960s, Bhandara decided to investigate the possibility of producing a high-grade whiskey.
“We went to Scotland to enlist their help in distilling our own whiskey, but they said it was impossible because we needed special water quality,” said the soft-spoken Bhandara, a member of Pakistan’s parliament.
“But we decided to try, and concluded that this water business was nonsense. Our whiskeys compares well with Scotch malts of equal age.”
Nowadays water is pumped up from deep underground aquifers and barley malt is imported from Britain because it is not grown in Pakistan.
The distilling process still employs the traditional way of spreading malt on the floor of a huge warehouse for processing, rather than using modern mechanical malting systems. Two giant cellars beneath the brewery contain hundreds of old oak casks where whiskey is awaiting bottling.
Experts say the result is a light spirit the color of old gold, with a balanced, pleasant taste and fragrant, oaky aroma.
In his monograph “The Complete Book of Whiskey,” author Jim Murray says that Murree’s 12-year Malt Classic not only compares favorably with Scottish versions, but “is much better than a number of lesser Scotch malts which come nowhere near in matching this whiskey’s crisp and delicate maltiness.”
The enthusiastic review says it “would not be out of place in Speyside,” referring to the region of Scotland where most malt whiskey distilleries are located.
Single malts are prepared in one distillery from malted barley and are often favored by connoisseurs over blended whiskeys, which are made from a mix of malts and grain whiskies distilled from wheat or corn.
Bhandara is especially irked by the export ban, saying he is trying to get parliament to revoke it because sales to Pakistanis and Indians living in Britain could enable the company to expand operations and employ hundreds of new workers.
“The government is very sensitive when it comes to Islamic edicts, and it would look very peculiar for an Islamic country to be exporting alcohol,” explains Bhandara, who describes his own religious affiliation as “nothing.”
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