Toasting to an Indian high

BENGALURU: Forget surrogate advertising and ageing movie stars looking pensively at glasses of amber liquid. Upcoming Indian liquor brands are trying out new approaches to the way we drink and dine.
Cheese fondue with herb crouton for amuse bouche; Dry cured barramundi (Asian Sea Bass) for starters, Braised Corned beef with creamed potato and roasted leeks for main course and Badami mango ice cream with chocolate honeycomb — as far as invite-only sit down dinners go, the menu that was served up at The Smoke Co’s Gautam Krishnankutty was exceptionally crafted, and adding a slight twist to the tasteful tale was the fact that the dishes were all paired with Geist, a craft beer brewed right here in Bengaluru.
So what’s new about that? Well, for the average beer–lover anywhere in the world, the beauty of the drink is that it can be had just about with everything. Pizzas, hotdogs, sandwich, sure, just add in a beer to the mix and it’s a party. But as the sit-down dinner, quirkily titled Geistronomy revealed, the plain old beer was ready for a makeover. One which said that it was posh enough, like wine, to be featured as the main drink to be paired with an exotic menu.
“A paired dinner is an interesting combination of education and experience. The idea is to help the consumer understand the nuances of the beverage," explains chef Manu Chandra who has hosted paired dinners in his restaurants around the country.
THINKING OUT OF THE BOX
For Narayan Manepally, founder and CEO of Geist, holding Geistronomy was about tapping into opportunity in India where the craft brewing movement is still catching on. “Craft beer is the new wine!” laughs Manepally. “For the longest time, you only had wines being paired with dishes and the only beer that we got to drink in India was lager. The advent of craft beer is changing that because we now have a diversity that allows you to pair them with different foods,” says Manepally. The dinner at The Smoke Co was the first in the series and ran successfully for a month and the brand plans to host more such dinners over the course of the year. But Geist isn’t the only Indian liquor company that’s exploring personal ways to connect with their consumers.
Greater Than, India’s first handcrafted gin brand recently hosted an informal gin tasting session at WeWork on Residency Road. “We had three tables put out on the terrace. On one table you could grab G&Ts (gin and tonic) served by Greater Than’s team, at the second table you could choose the garnishes for your drink – the choices included quirky ones like gummy bears and marshmallows to the classical rosemary and thyme. The third table had food to go with it. The idea was to get the consumer to interact with the product,” says Tarini Kumar, assistant sales manager of the brand. The only London dry gin made in India, Greater Than is only a couple of years old and as such, their promotional events hinge on projecting gin as a fun drink, which is why the brand has chosen to stay away from ‘paired dinners’. “People generally associate paired dinners with wine and we are looking to break away from that mould.We’d rather host barbeques,” Kumar says. Greater Than’s focus on innovative campaigns is understandable. After all, in a space where the whiskeys and wine brands of the world continue to stick to the tried and tested path of ‘paired dinners’ and ‘tasting sessions’, the need for a nascent brand to stand out becomes crucial. Even more so when you are talking about a liquor like gin that is considered ‘hipster’. And coming up with innovative ideas on a tried and tested path is the challenge.
HANDCRAFTED IN INDIA
It is this need to do something new that spurred Chandra to start a new dining experiment in his East Village-style restaurant Toast and Tonic in Mumbai and Bengaluru. Called The Sharing Table, the multiple-course meal has chefs rustling specially-themed dishes that pair well with gin. "We have the chef taking the guests through the dinner, talking about the dishes and why it pairs well with the gin. Of course, what makes it a unique experience is that the guests are mostly strangers, so there's a shared sense of community that's created,” he says.
For Manepally, the idea behind Geistronomy was, "to have the consumer experience our beers in a new way, and to then have them spread it by word-of-mouth. In devising promotional campaigns, we believe in going the slow-burn way where we let the consumer discover us on his own instead of pushing it down his throat. The paired dinner concept is just one way to go about it.”
Kumar recalls another innovative event that Greater Than organised in Mumbai recently. “We did a Negroni Trail where we tied up with a bunch of restaurants and got their bartenders to create cocktails using our product."
As Manepally, Kumar and anyone associated with the liquor industry would have you know, the true agenda behind events such as paired dinners or informal tasting sessions is about educating the customer about the product. It’s a path that the whiskey and wine industry has been traversing for aeons now.
“We are seeing a fair amount of quality brands from India coming of age. We have Greater Than in gin. We have DesmondJi, an agave spirit (tequila) that is distilled in Andhra Pradesh and bottled in Pune. We have Cazulo Feni, a premium brand of feni that is made in Goa,” says Vikram Achanta, co-founder and CEO of Tulleeho.
Commenting on brands and their efforts to create visibility, he says, “What’s interesting is the means brands are using to promote themselves. There are a couple of brands that are planning to start experiential centres just like distilleries in the west do. Paul John, the indigenous whisky brand, for instance, has opened an experience centre in Goa. Cazulo Feni is planning to start one late this year.” For Achanta, experiential campaigns 'are the next level of evangelism'. They help change perceptions of consumers and are effective in the long-term."
There was a time when it sufficed for a brand to have catchy jingles or phrases that aided in brand recall. “Khoob jamega rang, jab mil baithenge teen yaar: Aap main aur Bagpiper” is a dialogue people threw into conversations. There’s also Kingfisher’s ear-wormy Oo La La La Le O jingle. But ads and hoardings entail big spends and an impersonal touch. Younger, homegrown brands that pride themselves on being artisanal and wholly Indian, are eschewing the traditional path.
For them, it’s about creating memorable moments that look pretty and become talking points on social media, and connect with their customer instantly. What would bear watching is how creative and successful these organic ideas get in the years ahead.