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Spices grown in Kerala have been spreading their aroma and gaining fame in far-off lands for centuries.
The latest to be captivated by their taste and smell is a couple in Ireland who are using the organically-grown spices from the Indian state to flavour a gin they launched in June.
Last October, Ms Bhagya, a techie from Kollam in Kerala, and her husband Robert Barrett, an Irish biochemist, visited Wayanad in Kerala to learn more about the spices grown by a group of 450 farmers.
"They learnt about us through our website and contacted us," said Mr P.J. Chackochan, managing director at Vanamoolika Herbals, a charitable society that organises the collection and processing of various spice products.
"They came down to Wayanad and saw our operations. We shipped their order in January."
Vanamoolika shipped 100kg of organic spices, including nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, pomelo peel, lemongrass and cinnamon, to Ireland.
It did not take long for the end product to come out in Cork, Ireland - a naturally-blended gin aptly named Maharani.
Ms Bhagya, who went to Ireland in 2013 to do her Master of Business Administration, said that when she met Mr Barett at an Irish pub called Tom Collins in Limerick, Ireland, they had no idea that their romance would be encapsulated in a Malayalee-Irish gin just five years later.
"We met in 2015, and by December 2016, Rob popped the question. We were married in Kollam by August 2017," said Ms Bhagya.
The couple launched Rebel City Distillery in Cork's historic docklands in June with just one employee.
While Ms Bhagya is still working as a senior programme manager at Dell, Mr Barett is handling production with help from his father, Brendan.
Maharani's intriguing bottle has been doing the rounds on WhatsApp and social media for its clever efforts to encapsulate both their cultures on the label. Using Pantone's 2020 colour of the year, Classic Blue, the Malayalam lettering includes the words viplava (rebel) spirit, which Ms Bhagya said is a nod to the rebellious history of both Ireland and Kerala.
It also praises Vanamoolika for conservation and organic cultivation of plants and empowering women farmers. "We couldn't think of a better partnership: Strong women from my homeland," said Ms Bhagya. "We want to go back with bottles of Maharani and open the gin with those women."
Maharani gin blends nine botanicals, out of which the nutmeg, mace, cassia and pomelo are from Wayanad. The couple plans to source cardamom as well from Kerala soon.
Describing the flavour, Mr Barett said: "It's citrus and spice. You can taste juniper as well as the citrus of pomelo. There is a creamy mouth feel." Ms Bhagya added: "And a nice spicy, bright finish. It's the taste of home."
Indo-Asian News Service
