Watch out Tequila, Run for Cover Mezcal

Here Comes the New Feni

Its smell and flavour is potent, and can linger for hours. But once you get accustomed with feni, its flavours and cocktails, too, it's a game-changer

Text: Mohan Krishnan

I’ve hated feni for about 50 years. It went down rough, gave me a headache, a barf attack, and a hangover. Why did every Goan, and Goa lover, treat this like a cult drink?

But surprisingly everything changed for me in April 2025 when I was invited to a feni tasting in Bombay. Full of doubt, I went, I sipped, and I was conquered.

Hansel Vaz, owner of Cazulo Feni evangelised and offered tastings of his new ‘expressions’ of feni. I tried the Coconut Feni. Wow. Elegant, smooth, complex and very sippable. I tried some feni infusions. Super, especially the ginger. A feni conserva distilled with coffee from Coorg. This knocks the socks off Kahlua. Robust, full of life, tasty.

Hansel Vaz, Cazulo Feni

Going Going Goa

I went to Goa to do a deep dive into this world. I am now a convert both to the joys of feni, and the incredible cast of characters who people this world.

Goa is now in a ferment about feni, and with good reason, too. The new feni is of high quality, well-distilled (double or triple), goes down smooth and easy, and can hold its own with tequila and mezcal. For now, feni is only in Goa, for excise and other reasons. Feni must spread its wings, to reach its full potential.

I am confident that the new feni is ready to take its place in the Robust Canon, right up with tequila, mezcal, grappa, ouzo, arak, sake, pastis and all those tots that are part of the committed drinker’s lexicon.

How to enjoy the magical world of feni

Would you introduce a newbie to whisky, by directly offering him the peatiest single malt you can find? Or pour a complex Cab Sauvignon wine, for a novice to vino? Offer a slice of the stinkiest blue cheese, to a regular Cheddar cheese fan? You’d start at base camp, before attempting to climb the peak, right?

So too with feni. The way to discover feni is to first dip your feet into the pool, rather than take a dive off the deep end. Here’s my suggestion on how to climb the stairway to heaven.

Neero: refreshing, non-alcoholic, pure delight
The urrack cocktail: Limca/limbu juice, sliced chilli, salt/chilli powder-rimmed glass
Coconut feni cocktail
Cashew feni cocktail
Cashew feni infusions
Coconut feni neat
Cashew feni neat

Sure, there are brave newbies who dive straight into cashew feni, and live in that universe forever. A rare few. For the rest of us, here is a step ladder, to suggest a gentle and exhilarating ride all the way to the top.

Neero

It’s the last liquid to be extracted from the cashew fruit, after all the pressings. It’s refreshing, its non-alcoholic, it’s lovely. Sold in plastic bottles, even the bhajiwali has a few in her tokri in the markets of Goa. Very short season. Even shorter shelf life.

Urrack

From the first distillation of the cashew fruit emerges urrack, the soft and tender juice. There is no branded urrack, as of now. The bhatikars store the urrack in jerry cans, and you buy it in plastic bottles.

Urrack’s secret power is that it has only half the alcohol content of feni. A fruity pleasant aroma, and the feeling that you have sipped nirvana. Urrack is available for three months of the year, from March to May. It must be refrigerated, and it can even be frozen. Once the cashew fruit season is over, so is the urrack. Anjana Sharma of The Good Life Goa store says; "I lived in the US for many years, and came back to settle in Goa. I now only drink urrack. I have a special urrack fridge at home, full of bottles. I make the urrack last till the next season."

Up the ladder to the feni cocktails

Now it’s time to sample the feni cocktails. Both coconut and kaju feni have a large range of cocktails (we have recipes for you in the last two pages).

What do the cocktails do? Preserve the base taste of the feni, take the edge off, and add layers of flavour and variety. The classic feni cocktail is Limca, or limbu juice, a sliced chilli, in salt/chilli powder-rimmed glasses.

Feni infusions: Flavours directly introduced into alcohol

Hansel Vaz claims that there can be upto 25 expressions of cashew feni, and 17 of coconut. Kokum, jeera, pineapple, chilli, lime, ginger, pepper, dukshiri, orange, cidre (a Goan lemon), lemon grass, garlic, jambul, jackfruit, guava, amla, motomba, echinacea, elaichi, chikoo, basil, mint, rosemary. Some are already in the market.

Urrack, feni cocktails, and infusions, are what Hansel calls 'Recruiter Drinks'. Having worked your way through them, if you have the mojo, you’re now ready to graduate.

The Original. Cashew feni

Sitting on top of the ladder is the OG cashew feni, often just called kaju. This has more fruity bold flavours… jackfruit, pineapple, and a strong aroma. In its purest high-quality form, it is an acquired taste. It takes getting used to. But once you fall in love, be warned, there’s no coming back. The last bounty from the fully crushed cashew fruit, is the leftover bagasse – it provides the best natural fertiliser for the farmer’s land. What a lovely virtuous cycle.

Coconut feni

Prahlad Kakar, ad supremo, Goa aficionado, and feni devotee hails the revival of the coconut feni… ‘The nectar of the Gods. If it’s marketed properly, it can give tequila a run for its money’. The flavours of this feni are tender coconut water, slightly nutty sweetish taste, the hint of sea salt and green chilli. Heta Pandit, repository of knowledge about Goa, gave me this amazing factoid. "The Portugese brought cashew trees from Brazil for the caustic cashew oil, which was primarily used for caulking ships. Goan house builders later started using the oil for their roof timbers. I actually caulked my own roof timbers with cashew oil about 20 years ago, and I can say… no termites and no leaks."

Clemente DaSylva, owner of Aani Ek told me that the Chinese are training Vietnamese cashew farmers to extract a resin from the interior of the cashew shells, to produce varnish and even insecticide. Are there no limits to what the cashew can do?

The feni story must be told

As a former ad man, I am entranced by the sheer storytelling that surrounds feni. Feni has been distilled from coconut trees for centuries. The Portugese brought in cashew trees from Brazil, ostensibly to strengthen the hill slopes. Goans began to create feni from cashew. Today, almost all the feni consumed in Goa, is caju. The cashew fruit must be allowed to ripen, till it falls off the tree. It must not be plucked. The fruit must be picked off the grass, while the dew drops are still fresh, the cashew nut removed, and the fruit crushed, within a few hours.

In days of yore, the fruit was stomped by foot to extract the juice. These days, the crushing is done in with equipment which varies from stones, to stainless steel presses in the better distilleries.

At the SVD Seminary near Margao, you can have pure cashew feni brewed by the priests. This priestly order has large cashew plantations, and the priests seek piety through their work. They cultivate cashew, sell the nuts at the Ponda market, and distill feni from the fruit. Feni fiends “swear” by the quality. So, it’s not just the Belgian monks who make beer, or the Alpine priests who send out their St Bernards, with brandy for the lost. We’ve got our own in Goa.

Terroir is not just for wine

The French are obsessed with the idea of terroir. The complete natural environment in which a particular wine is produced, including factors like soil, topography and the micro climates. The Portugese allowed each village to have its own facility to make feni, and retain its own identity. Every bhatikar makes a legitimate claim that his distillation is unique – the soil on which his trees are planted, the fruit from his trees, the wood used to fuel the fire, the skill of “tapping and listening”, knowing when the fermentation is done, the art of the perfect distillation, the finesse in cutting the “heads” and the “tails” while preserving the “heart”. Goa even has a famous woman bhatikar. Read up on Pramila Salgaonkar.

A connoisseur like Cecil Pinto claims that he has personally tasted from every bhati that matters in Goa, and can tell the difference. Doesn’t all this add up to a form of terroir, a village-level, highly local provenance? There is monetisable magic in these stories.

Let’s go to Goa for the urrack season

An annual pilgrimage to Goa for the urrack season can become a global tourist thing – after all, people rush to the Dordogne, Alba or Istria regions for the black and white truffle seasons. Look at the mad scramble for Beaujolais Nouveau. If we tell the story, they will come. Who are the new storytellers?

The new leaders of feni

There’s a breed of new feni entrepreneurs, highly qualified and ambitious, who have given the product its 'wow', and are ready to take the new feni beyond Goa. This is no longer a cottage industry, with lack of quality, and consistency. The bhatikars are very much there. A few make brilliant feni, most don’t. But they’re not the future of feni. These guys are...

Hansel Vaz is a trained geologist, who worked in New Zealand for years, returned to transform the feni business that his parents had started. He’s built a great brand, Cazulo, and relaunched the family brand Dona Maria. He’s revived coconut feni, by paying cultivators well. He’s building the future of feni.

Guru Datta Bhakta nurtured his family brand Cazcar, and is the first to acquire the GI tag for cashew feni. His distilling facility is state-of-the-art, with stainless steel vats and copper pipes.

Clemente DaSylva is a trained architect, whose Aani Ek was the first to launch branded and bottled cashew feni infusions – Lemon, Honey Cinnamon and Chilli. He has many other flavours up his sleeve.

Yash Sawardekar got an offer for funding after Shark Tank, and launched his brand Goenchi. An excellent product, stylish design and passionate evangelising are his hallmarks. He’s launched a kokum variant.

Karun Sanghi runs a successful tyre retreading business, and is the founder of The Feni Project. His Sentari Feni is aged for three years in oak barrels, with a rich amber colour, reminiscent of whisky. He’s won international medals. He makes a limited quantity of Sentari, he wants it to be the prized artisanal feni.

Karun Sanghi, Founder of The Feni Project

Solomon Diniz markets Tinto Feni, ‘slow-distilled’ and matured over two years, in attractive ceramic bottles, and is the only one currently selling in Bombay.

Rhea Distilleries make Big Boss, the first branded feni launched in 1979, and Fidalgo Premium Cashew Feni, the only triple-distilled brand, with a higher alcohol content.

Felipe came back from the US to Goa to manage family land, and is now deeply involved with feni. He extracts the juice from the fruit, and sells it to distillers, for fermentation. He is an expert on the laws of land ownership, and cultivation of cashew.

There are two men, who are ‘feni adjacent’, but absolutely belong in this story. Desmond Nazareth, techie in the US, came back to Goa, and missed drinking his tequila cocktails. He decided to find agave plants in India. He searched all over, and after three years identified the Deccan Plateau as prime potential for agave. He eventually discovered as many as 230 varietals. Thus began the agave revolution in India.

Desmond Nazareth

To go off on an interesting tangent, Rahul Srivastava’s based in the Jarnac region of France. He imports mahua flowers from India, makes mahua in small batches, and sells it under the brand name Mah in Europe. I’ve been told it is ‘ethereal’, and I hope to sample some soon.

Mahua/mahura is a part of Indian heritage, like feni. The British banned mahua, but could not wean Indians away to more Western drinks, and opium. Mahua flowers grow in about nine states, and the local distillations are exhilarating. New mahua brands have been recently launched, and bars offer mahua cocktails.

Informal taste testing

I took samples of the new feni to a few bartenders in Bombay, and got a great response. All were impressed with the quality, and loved the feni cocktails. ‘On par with tequila and mezcal'. 'Gobsmacked with Desmond’s agave'.


Desmondji Cocktail	Gobsmacked by this!

Chef Sarita Pereira and Prahlad Kakar hosted a feni tasting for a group of Goaphiles at The Lovefools restaurant in Bandra. Here are Prahlad’s tasting notes:

Goenchi Coconut Feni – ‘made with feni, guava-infused gin, guava juice, lemon, a glass rimmed with salt and chilli powder. Delicate coconut flavour, better than tequila or mezcal.
Cazulo Coconut Feni – 'is also very good, and seems to have a slightly sweeter finish, that some people might prefer'.
Sentari-aged Cashew Feni – 'rich and evolved, aged for three years in oak casks, a sipping drink with a golden whisky hue'.
Cazulo Coffee Conserva – ‘the espresso martini was excellent, as good as any international brand’.
Goenchi Kokum Feni – ‘layers of feni, kokum, and an exquisite aftertaste of jeera. Could tone down the sweetness just a bit’.

Summing up, Prahlad has this to say, "Feni is one of the best artisanal products of Goa, and also India. Unique in its history, and its incredible flavour story. I call it the spirit of Goa."

Prahlad Kakar presiding over a feni tasting session at The Lovefools

Raising the bar

Anant Shirodkar owns two of the hippest bars in Goa, Pablo’s and Bar Cold Drinks. Anant buys his urrack and feni direct from chosen bhatikars. He has a self-service DIY bar chat with the bartender, pick your spirit and cocktail, it’s mixed for you.
Buland Shukla is a polymath, architect, who also makes high-end audio gear. He runs the For the Record vinyl bar, right in the heart of Panjim. He’s aged feni in jackfruit wood barrels, with excellent results. They’ve created over 50 feni cocktails, and done infusions with fruit skins. "Bad feni smells and tastes of rotting socks. I want to convert all feni haters by giving an experience of the real feni."

Pankaj Balachandran runs Boilermaker and The Lab. "I want to showcase feni to the world, and put it right up there with sake, soju and shochu. We have experimented with cocktails like Banana/Bournvita Feni and Miso Feni and they are great hits. I’ve also launched Mr Jerry’s, a bottled feni cocktail."

Here’s a small and very incomplete list, of the best feni cocktail bars in Goa: Petisco, Tesuro, Slow Tide, Cavatina, Boilermaker, Bar Hideaway, Bomras, Jammin’ Goat, Grump’s, Miguel’s. Hoping to discover more as I go along the feni route. But here is a golden nugget! Hiroyasu Kayama runs Bar Benfiddich in Tokyo – No. 5 in the Asia’s Top 50. He takes back feni and urrack, to offer at his bar.


For The Record- Buland Shukla's vinyl bar and hideaway	Pankaj Balachandran, founder of Boilermaker and The Lab

Feni and chakna

There’s a tapas-style munching culture that flourishes in the bars of Goa… and here are the experts’ faves:

Jill De Souza – Fried prawns or rissois, beef chilli, tongue roast, prawn or garlic wafers.
Clemente DaSylva – Boiled gram.
Yash Sawardekar – Roasted Goan cashews
Buland Shukla – Air-fried bhindi, kappa (a potato slice bhajji), croquettes, potato chop.
Pankaj Balachandran – Choriz peanuts, raw mango, raw guava.
Sagar Neve (of Ekaa) – At home, we make dry bombil, with some peanut powder and eat it with smashed chilli and lemon.
Hansel Vaz – Pork, chouris (chorizo), boiled eggs with condiments, small plates with fried fish.

The feni philosophers


Cecil Pinto	David DeSouza

Goans take their feni seriously. Presiding over the tumult is Cecil Pinto, the original BYOB man. If you invite him for dinner, he lands up with a small 300 ml bottle of feni from his private stash. "The Goan knows where good feni is, and how to get it. The discerning few also know that coconut feni, though hard to find, is a delight. Hansel Vaz has single-handedly revived coconut feni production."

"There is demand for the best quality feni. Bottlers are now improving the quality of the liquor, not just using fancy bottles." David DeSouza, renowned photographer, is working on an encyclopedic feni book, with Hansel Vaz. "Charmayne (his gorgeous wife) and I call it the 'truth serum'. When we drink feni, we have no one to impress – we tell each other compelling truths, and no one takes offence. This is the feni high. You drink good feni with all your senses, and you’re richly rewarded."

"Feni is the poor man’s drink. At weddings, whisky is the show-off drink, with expensive meats. Feni is stashed away in a corner. But when you have a housewarming, a vonxeet, you invite the whole village for a community meal – feni, red rice, chicken or fish, served on a palm leaf, sitting on the floor."

Feni ignites a lot of passion. Some of it is what Buland calls “generational gossip”, but most is rooted in the lived experience, and passed-down oral history of Goa.

The GI tag

Cashew feni has had a GI tag since 2009, and finally in 2025 the first brand was launched. Coconut feni will soon have its tag. The tag means that everything about the origin, quality of the cashew fruit, the fermentation, distillation and purity has passed rigorous standards.

Feni is good for you

Dukshiri (sarsaparilla) is one of the traditional expressions of feni. Joanna Lobo, the talented food writer from Goa says, "If we kids were not feeling well, my grandmum would pour out a tablespoon of dukshiri feni, light a candle to flame off the alcohol, and give it to us. It was like a magic home remedy."

Keshav Prakash (founder of The Vault) told me that farm workers would drop off at the local taverna on their way home, and get their 30 ml of the dukshiri (pain-veins) feni to ease their aching muscles. Who’s to say if it cured the pain, or dulled their senses?

The Caju Fest

Thanks to MLA Dr Deviya Rane, the Goa Forest Development Corporation sponsors a three-day Caju Fest. It’s in April-May, and held in the heart of Panjim. It gives everyone involved with the industry a chance to showcase their products. Locals and tourists flock for the tastings, the music and the block party.

Feni must conquer India. The world awaits.

The new feni has to spread its wings way beyond Goa. Hansel plans to launch his Cazulo in Karnataka. I can’t wait to see feni hit Bombay bars and stores.

Liquor drinking goes in cycles. Scotch, then single malt, then gin and vodka, now tequila and mezcal. It’s time for the next big thing. It’s time for feni.

Be a feni snob. Flex the lingo.

Cazcar: The cashew picker
Bhatkar: The landowner
Bhatikar: The village distiller
Toddy: The nectar tapped from the coco palm
Mollop: First distillation from toddy
Urrack: First distillation from cashew fruit
Cazulo: Second distillation, mostly sold as feni
Feni: Third distillation
Neero/Nirro: The non-alcoholic juice from the final press
Fenn: The bubbles that form when you stir
Launi: Clay pot used during distillation
Garrafoes: Glass bottles to rest feni in
Saude: Cheers, to your good health, sante
Aani ek: I’ll have another!

Check out some feni recipes that you can try at home.