Consumed at your finest hour and gulped on your darkest most desperate of nights or indeed during a gathering storm and at all times in between this large peg of old Monk with a dash of coca cola is perhaps even more forever than a diamond, and its possession just as ephemeral.

It’s a coming of age thrill, a break up drowner, that first deal or salary cheers or indeed a sore memory of that bar brawl that got out of hand.

If ever Old Monk had a hashtag that would be #Omnipresent.

Everything, to pera phrase the first line of the Mahabharata, is in this bottle and that not in it – is nowhere.The world had to wait for the old monk to arrive.

The evil Englishman General Dyer’s father started the brewery in 1855 but the rum appeared 99 years later when a dashing very young Indian entrepreneur Ved Rattan Mohan put together the magic liquid inside a bottle shaped like a Benedictine monk said to be in the likeness of HG Meakins –  the co founder of the original distillery.

Experiences on tastes differ violently amongst fans of the 7 year aged classic. For me there is the full frontal alcohol and smokiness with a lot of spice and a shroud cloud of sweet molasses. This is not a complicated drink, its simple the words you are searching for – tasty and refreshing basically sum it up.

The rum was standard issue for the armed forces, the term rum rations gets a whole new meaning with Old Monk and I have had the pleasure of a sip on more than a few rounds at the world’s highest mess – the Kumar mess one time on assignment. They say that even the Pakistan rangers prefer it over the Murree issue (they probably get it from Dubai). While for the rest of us its 42.8% VV for the armed forces issue alcohol content is 50% –  that’s half of the defence of the realm right there.

In the last few years though like all of us after a few, the promoters too have broken the bottle. In India government policy determines the fortune of liquor companies which is a regulations minefield that can give a teetotaler a bad hangover. In UP and Tamilnadu government policy gave competitors a free run and the supply side dried up. Indeed, as the sales plummeted from 8 million cases to just 3.5 million in 2015 there was crisis. Worry not, have a small and raise a toast, as the sales reportedly picked up to about 5 million cases lately and a new generation at the helm – Hemant and Vinay Mohan are on the job to make old monk pouring again. Here is saying cheers back to the future.

By

Ninad D Sheth