13Mail Today, New Delhi / Chandigarh, Thursday, April 25, 2013 Mail Today, New Delhi, Thursday, April 25, 2013

FORTUNE COOKIESOURISH BHATTACHARYYA

The writer is a noted food critic

COMMENT

DEVIPRASAD RAO

IIT-ian’stequilasunrise

DesmondNazareth at home with his

portfolio ofdrinks

ADRINK NAMED Desmondjimay seem at first sight to be abad Punjabi joke, but theGoan ‘100% Agave’ is India’sanswer to tequila and it hasearned critical acclaim even

from the Mexican newspaper, Mural, pub-lished from Guadalajara, which is like get-ting a Bordeaux daily to agree that Indianwines are worth quaffing.

With a growing fan followingamong Delhiites who treat Goa astheir second home (but can’t getthe brand in their backyard), andinvestments by private equityheavy hitter Ajay Relan, industrial-ist Shrinivas Dempo and dotcompioneer Sanjeev Bhikchandani,Desmondji gets its name from itscreator, Desmond Nazareth, whohas the most interesting personalhistory (more about it later). It ismade with alcohol distilled fromagave (pronounced ‘a-gaa-way’)growing in the Chittoor district ofAndhra Pradesh, at a placenamed Pedda ThippaSamudram, which looksas if it has fallen off themap and landed at aspot 200km awayfrom Chittoor town.“Its geo-climaticconditions are justlike those of theMexican regionsassociated withagave cultivation,”says Nazareth, who hasa micro-distillery in thatforgotten corner of the Dec-can Plateau with an installedcapacity of 250,000 litres.

Agave plants grow in wastelandsand their leaves are used for deco-rative household knick-knacks, butit is their stalk that contains theheart (the Mexicans call it thepina) that yields the juice which isdouble distilled into tequila in old-fashioned pot stills. The heart,which usually weighs around 120kilos (although Desmond hasextracted one giant specimen tip-ping the scales at 300 kilos!), is har-

A dessert of contentionAS YOU’D expect from theNew Zealand high commis-sioner, Jan Henderson servedthe pavlova to her guests at alunch she had hosted in hon-our of a wine delegation visit-ing from her country. The hos-pitable high commissionermade it a point to emphasisethat the delectable dessert,inspired by the skirts of theiconic classical ballet dancerAnna Pavlova (1881-1931), isa Kiwi, and not Aussie, inven-tion. In the antipodean war ofclaims, the Australians insistthe pavlova was created by achef named Bill Sachse at theEsplanade Hotel, Perth, in1935. The world bought thistheory till Prof. Helen Leachof the University of Otago,New Zealand, found a Kiwirecipe dating back to 1929.

WHAT does an interna-tional cricketer do afterhanging up his boots?Become a coach or a com-mentator, or, like ChennaiSuper Kings guru and for-mer New Zealand captainStephen Fleming (in pic),discover the spendingpower of the Indian market.

Fleming has padded up asthe brand ambassador anddirector of a Kiwi food mar-keting company, Quali-tyNZ, whose portfolioextends from Manuka honeyto Pacific King salmon,South Island lobster, arte-sian water and apples. Giv-ing him company is theKiwi captain and wicket-keeper Brendon McCullum,whose record of the highestIPL score (158) was justshattered by Chris Gayle’sexplosive 175 on Tuesday.

QualityNZ’s managingdirector Geoff Allott, whowas in the city with a winedelegation, also shares acricketing tie with his brandambassador. A left-arm seambowler, Allott was the high-est wicket-taker along withShane Warne in the 1999World Cup (20 wickets,including that of SouravGanguly, in nine matches)and until last month, he heldthe dubious distinction ofspending the longest time on

the crease without scoring arun — 77 balls in 101 min-utes against South Africa in1999 — till it took England’sStuart Broad 103 minutes toget off the mark against NewZealand at Eden Park,Auckland, on March 26.

Allott now bats for anentirely different cause. Hetalks about bringing the bestof New Zealand produce toIndia, about getting hiscountry’s celebrity chef TonySmith and MasterchefIndia’s Kunal Kapoor for acookout, and introducing themarket to the lesser-knownbut unmissable Kiwi winesfrom small producers. But ofcourse, cricket keeps comingback to his conversation.

LOOK WHO’S BATTINGFOR KIWI FOOD & WINE

Anna Pavlova after whomthe dessert is named

TODAY is AnzacDay, which com-memorates the

sacrifices of the Aus-tralian and New ZealandArmy Corps in the WorldWar I Battle of Gallipoli.In the time-honouredtradition, the Anzac Daybreakfast includes rumand coffee inspired bythe tot of rum includedin the daily ration of thetroops. The drink isn’tunusual — the Spaniardscall it carajillo and itdates back to the Span-ish occupation of Cuba.Spanish soldiers, as thestory goes, drank it forcoraje (Spanish for‘courage’) and that ishow the drink got to benamed corajillo andfinally carajillo.

pursue a filmmaking course, andended up establishing a softwarecompany that specialised in devel-oping Y2K solutions and even didwork with ITeS giant Wipro. Notmany tequila makers can lay claimto such a vastly diverse back-ground, so what drew Desmond tothe idea of making India’s veryown tequila?

With his usual sense of drama,Desmond says he used to miss themargaritas that he would have inAmerica and his quest for the bestled him to launch his own ‘100%Agave’ brand. And what’s next onhis menu? There’s Pure Cane, adouble distilled sugarcane spirit,an artisanal take on Braziliancachaca (which goes into makingthe cocktail caipirinha). I can setthe Brazilians do a double take.

vested only when an agave plantattains maturity (Desmond, nowonder, says tequila is made fromthe “waste of the wasteland”) andeach one, after distillation, yields 8-12 litres of the heady liquid that isfirst fermented and then distilledinto what the world calls tequila.

Desmond can’t use the name‘tequila’ because it is protectedunder the Geographical Indication(G.I.) system — only a tequila madein Mexico can be called a tequila,which gets its name from the citywhere it is primarily produced,

65km northwest of Guadala-jara. The Americans,

though, have got Mexicoto agree to the use of

the word ‘tequila’ forthe agave-basedalcoholic beveragesproduced in thatcountry but bottledin America.Nonetheless, the

gregarious Goan’s‘100% Agave’ is in the

distinguished com-pany of upper-end

tequila brands such asPatron because the agave contentof the popular labels is a mere 51per cent — the minimum requiredfor a drink to be called a tequila.But, as Desmond points out, abottle of his ‘100% Agave’ sells for`800 in Goa, whereas a Patron willset you back by `5,000 and a regu-lar Don Julio by `3,000-4,000.

Who’s Desmond Nazareth? He’sa Goan who studied mechanicalengineering at IIT-Chennai, thenwent on a full scholarship to Tem-ple University, Philadelphia to

Desmondused to miss

the margaritas hehad in America and

it launched thequest that led himto develop ‘100%

Agave’