http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4382568.html
Dec. 6, 2006, 5:08AM
Muslim distillery to unveil new product
By SLOBODAN LEKIC Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan 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."
___
On the Net:
http://www.murreebrewery.com
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