Profits or Quality? Is Goan Feni fast loosing it’s kick?

PANAJI: Feni lovers, experts, foreign tourists and aficionados visiting Goa this season – some of them after two years, are worried that their favourite Goan brew – Feni, doesn’t seem to taste, feel and hit like it did, say a decade earlier.

Year after year, quality and standards have been declining and as Samson Gardner, a British tourist who has been visiting Goa regularly for the last two decades (except during the Covid lockdown period) puts it – the Feni in Goa just isn’t the same, even though he opens the sealed bottle in front of his own eyes at every restaurant he visits.

Goa’s heritage brew, Feni, which has a GI or Geographical Indicator, has not only become dearer for the average Goan and foreign tourist alike, it seems to have lost its unique zing, with manufacturers and bottlers putting profits before quality.

Over the last two Feni producing seasons, its cost has risen from Rs 4,000 per can (35 litres) to Rs 7,000 to 8,000, more than double, claims a well-known brand owner. As a result, some unscrupulous elements have started diluting the brew at source, or mixing artificial flavours or flavouring agents along with water to double the quantity, even before it reaches the bottlers and packers.

While the non-Goan, non-regular Feni drinker wouldn’t know the difference and definitely not the hordes of domestic tourists who flock to Goa during the New Year festive season, Feni lovers and experts can easily spot the counterfeit.

As early as last year, as prices began to rise, manufacturers and stakeholders expressed fear that miscreants may start making spurious and artificial versions of the popular drink using artificial ingredients, chemical flavouring and industrial alcohol.

Feni, the most popular local drink of the coastal state, along with Urrak, was notified as a state heritage drink by the Goa government in 2016. While Cashew Feni is more popular, Feni is also prepared from Coconut in the coastal state.

The Cashew Feni from Goa is also the country’s first indigenous liquor to obtain a Geographical Indication tag, a process which was initiated by local Goan manufacturers of the brew in 2009 to ensure that its traditional manufacturing process was not replicated in other parts of the country or diluted by mass manufacturing. But now, in spite of the GI, as manufacturing costs spiral, the guardians of the holy grail themselves have begun to succumb to deception and counterfeiting.

According to local manufacturers, an unprecedented drop in cashew production in Goa due to unseasonal rains last two seasons, has in turn affected the production of Cashew Feni.

“We were expecting the price of Cashew Feni may be hiked by 20 to 30 per cent. But to our surprise, it has almost doubled compared to last year. Now Feni producers are charging Rs 7,000 to 8,000 for a single can of 35 litres. This rate will remain constant till the next production is done,” Shailesh Naik, a retailer, was quoted by news agency IANS as saying, a few months earlier.

The increased rates fuelled fears of spurious versions of the traditional brew, which seem to have become a reality now. Feni otherwise is one of the cheapest alcoholic drinks in Goa.

‘Urrak’ is obtained from the single distillation process or first distillate, while once double distilled, the drink is referred to as Feni.

Urrak, a seasonal drink containing alcohol, is consumed with lime juice and is very popular in local bars and taverns. Feni is also blended with spices like clove, pepper, nutmeg and cinnamon to make another variation called ‘masala Feni’, though the original double distillate is most popular.

The main concern is not the escalated prices of Feni, but the fear among traditional manufacturers that some stakeholders might try to fill in the shortfall by making spurious or artificial versions of the drink and the trend would begin to spread across the coastal state, with tourists unable to tell the difference lapping up lab or machine-manufactured artificially flavoured and strengthened Feni, instead of the original, traditionally prepared drink.

The production of genuine Feni in the previous season was almost half of the last ten-year average, causing a huge shortfall in the demand and giving rise to counterfeiting, which has begun to spread.