India has spent years asking the world to take its spirits seriously. Indian single malts are winning international recognition, our distillers are increasingly confident on the global stage, and some of the world's largest-selling whisky brands come from India. Yet, in 2026, we seem to have arrived at a surprisingly fundamental question at home: what exactly constitutes an Indian whisky? And, while we are at it, an Indian rum or brandy?
I have spent a large part of my professional life in this industry, and what surprises me is not that FSSAI has questioned established practices. Regulators have every right to question an industry when they believe standards are being interpreted incorrectly. What is surprising is what has happened after those questions were raised. There have been notices, sampling, restrictions and court proceedings. FSSAI has objected to the use of whisky flavour in whisky and rum flavour in rum. Manufacturers have engaged with the regulator, some formulations are reportedly being changed, and scrutiny has extended beyond a single company. Yet the larger industry still does not appear to have been told, comprehensively and publicly, what exactly the new interpretation is and where it ultimately leads.
For an industry of approximately 450 million nine-litre cases, that is an extraordinary position to be in. Are manufacturers supposed to study what another company has done to its formulation and infer that this is the new standard? Should they wait for another notice, another inspection or another court proceeding before discovering what compliance means for them? Regulatory interpretation cannot evolve manufacturer by manufacturer until an industry eventually pieces together the answer.
If the interpretation is clear, why isn't it in black and white?
The existing regulations themselves recognise the use of neutral and rectified spirits within specified Indian alcoholic-beverage categories. The question, therefore, cannot simply be whether neutral spirit is legitimate. The more complicated issue appears to be what may provide the defining character of the finished product, which flavouring functions are permissible, and where adjustment of a product ends and simulation of category character begins. These are legitimate questions, but they are questions that require precise and nationally applicable answers.
If FSSAI believes the existing regulations prescribe a particular compositional requirement for character-bearing spirit, it should identify that requirement and explain how it is to be interpreted. If the regulations do not prescribe a minimum proportion, the industry should not find itself drifting towards one through individual enforcement actions or through manufacturers attempting to anticipate what might satisfy the regulator. The debate should not be reduced to inventing percentages. The first question is much more fundamental: what does the law actually require?
The same applies to the word "align", which has increasingly entered the conversation. Align with what, precisely? A company may understandably keep its formulation proprietary, but the regulatory interpretation against which that formulation is being assessed cannot be proprietary. A company's recipe is proprietary. A regulator's interpretation cannot be. If a national regulator has arrived at an interpretation affecting an entire category, that interpretation should be available to the entire category.
Reformulate. Fine. But with what?
This becomes even more important when reformulation is presented as though it were a relatively straightforward answer. Remove an ingredient, adjust the recipe and move on. Unfortunately, spirits manufacturing does not necessarily work that way. Much of mainstream Indian IMFL has historically been built around neutral spirit, including ENA produced from agricultural feedstocks such as broken rice. Highly rectified neutral spirit is deliberately manufactured to remove much of the underlying fermentation and raw-material character. Character spirit is produced differently because it is intended to retain characteristics that can subsequently be developed through maturation.
That distinction matters. India cannot simply take its existing pool of highly rectified broken-rice ENA, put it into barrels and assume that time will convert it into the same liquid as a character spirit specifically fermented and distilled for maturation. Wood can contribute colour, aroma and flavour, but it cannot recreate everything that rectification was designed to remove. If a regulatory interpretation materially changes where the defining character of a whisky must originate, therefore, we are potentially talking about something much larger than a recipe adjustment.
India's whisky market alone is approximately 279 million cases. At that scale, a substantive change in formulation philosophy can have consequences for distillation infrastructure, maturation inventories, agricultural inputs, working capital, product consistency and ultimately affordability. Brandy raises another set of questions because greater reliance on grape-derived spirit would have implications for grapes, fermentation and appropriate distillation capacity. Rum has its own technical realities because highly rectified molasses-based neutral spirit and character-bearing rum distillate are not automatically interchangeable simply because both originate in the sugarcane value chain. Reformulation, depending upon what is ultimately being required, can become a supply-chain question rather than merely a blending-room question.
FSSAI has touched a chord. Why is it silent now?
That is precisely why FSSAI now needs to come out in the open and engage with stakeholders. It has touched a chord that runs through a very large part of the Indian alcobev industry. Once a regulator raises a question this fundamental, silence cannot be the next stage of regulation. Manufacturers, distillers, blenders, food scientists, agricultural experts, State Excise authorities and the concerned ministries need to understand the interpretation, the science supporting it and the practical consequences of implementing it.
The continuing absence of a comprehensive public clarification inevitably creates another question. Does FSSAI itself yet have complete clarity about where this interpretation leads? If its position is technically sound, supported by the regulations and practically implementable, there should be no difficulty in placing the reasoning before stakeholders and defending it. If, after examining the consequences, the regulator has discovered that what initially appeared to be a relatively simple formulation issue is considerably more complicated, there is equally nothing wrong with acknowledging that and reconsidering the approach. Good regulation does not become weaker because a regulator listens. It becomes stronger because the eventual rule survives scientific, technical and economic scrutiny.
What is difficult to justify is leaving an entire industry suspended between enforcement and silence. FSSAI has initiated a conversation about something fundamental to Indian spirits. It now needs to complete that conversation openly, through consultation, rather than allowing its position to be reconstructed from individual notices, individual company responses and individual court cases.
And what exactly is the industry doing?
The industry, however, cannot place the entire responsibility on FSSAI. Indian alcobev companies compete ferociously for market share, distribution, shelf space, packaging, price points and consumers. Yet something considerably more fundamental is being debated today: the definition of the liquid inside their bottles. On that issue, the industry appears strangely fragmented.
Companies do not need to agree commercially to recognise a common regulatory interest. No manufacturer should have to treat another manufacturer's reformulation as regulatory guidance. No company should need to study somebody else's court petition to understand its own compliance position. And no manufacturer should wait until an enforcement officer arrives at its plant before asking questions that already affect the entire category. The industry should be seeking collective clarity, not collective resistance to regulation. Those are very different things.
There is a table missing from this story
There is, in fact, a table missing from this entire debate. FSSAI, the concerned Ministry, State Excise authorities, manufacturers, distillers, blenders, food scientists, maturation specialists and agricultural experts should be sitting around it. The regulations should be on that table, but so should the science, India's existing manufacturing infrastructure, availability of different character spirits, agricultural capacity, maturation realities, economics of the affordable market, state revenues, consumer expectations and export ambitions. A regulatory definition cannot be written in isolation from the ecosystem that must produce to it.
Perhaps India should finally define India
There is also a tendency in India to assume that the international benchmark for whisky must inevitably begin and end with Scotland. Scotch deserves enormous respect. Its definition has evolved around Scotland's history, raw materials, geography and production traditions. But Scotland is not the only country in the world that makes whisky, nor has every credible whisky-producing country simply reproduced the Scotch model.
Canada is particularly instructive because Canadian whisky evolved within its own blending traditions and consequently developed regulatory standards that reflect that history, including practices different from those governing Scotch. Japan offers another useful perspective. Its whisky industry developed through its own history and has subsequently established standards specifically defining Japanese whisky. The details of these systems are different from India and from each other, but the broader principle is worth recognising: respected whisky-producing countries can develop definitions around their own production histories and regulatory philosophies without sacrificing credibility.
India should study such precedents not because Canadian or Japanese rules should simply be transplanted here, but because they demonstrate that there is no intellectual requirement for every national whisky tradition to be forced into one production template. India has its own grains, agricultural economy, climate, distillation infrastructure, maturation environment, consumer market and manufacturing history. Those realities deserve to be part of the discussion when India determines what its spirits should be.
That does not mean creating conveniently weak standards to protect everything the industry has historically done. Nor does it mean defending a formulation merely because it has existed for decades. Standards must be scientifically credible, consumers must not be misled, and Indian products must withstand international scrutiny. But there is an enormous difference between strengthening an Indian standard and assuming that credibility requires India to become an imitation of somebody else.
This controversy therefore presents an opportunity much larger than the immediate dispute over flavours or individual formulations. India can use this moment to create clear, modern and internationally defensible definitions of its major spirit categories, definitions that recognise Indian manufacturing realities while establishing transparent boundaries around what may legitimately be sold as whisky, rum and brandy. At precisely the moment when Indian spirits are earning greater respect internationally, uncertainty at home about the rules governing some of our largest categories is the last message we should be sending.
Clarity is the only sensible way forward
But such definitions cannot emerge through regulatory osmosis. They need consultation, technical evidence and documentation. Once the science and the interpretation have been debated, the conclusion should be written clearly, applied nationally and accompanied by a reasonable transition framework wherever substantive change is genuinely required. Manufacturers would then know the standard, laboratories could test against the same benchmark, enforcement officers could apply it consistently, State governments could understand its implications and consumers could know precisely what they were buying.
There is no reason for the industry to fear that kind of clarity, and there should be no reason for a confident regulator to avoid it. If FSSAI knows exactly what the existing regulations require, it should document and explain that interpretation. If questions remain, it should acknowledge them and consult the stakeholders who understand the science and manufacturing realities. And if deeper examination shows that an initial interpretation needs refinement, there is nothing embarrassing about refining it. What should concern everyone is regulatory uncertainty being allowed to persist simply because nobody wants to reopen a question that has already been raised.
India has spent years asking the world to take Indian spirits seriously. Perhaps this controversy can finally force us to do something we should have done with equal confidence long ago: define Indian spirits on the basis of science, transparency, our own production realities and informed consultation. FSSAI has touched a chord. The industry has heard it. Now both sides need to come to the table and finish the conversation in the open, because a 450-million-case industry should not have to wait for the next notice to discover what is right and what is wrong.
About the Author: Poonam Chandel is the Former MD of NeuWorld Spirits.
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