Products with heritage and a connection to place remain on trend. Regional spirits such as génépi, jenever and amaro are all showing uptake, while in the April edition we looked at India’s lesser-known flower spirit mahua. Now the spotlight is on Sri Lanka’s arrack, which has an industry A-lister fighting its cause.

Rockland Distilleries’ Ceylon Arrack is looking to hero the category and grow its presence in the world of mixology in partnership with consultancy agency Mr Lyan Studio. Currently focusing on the UK, where the liquid is bottled for global distribution, the partnership has also seen the spirit listed in bars such as London’s Lyaness.

“Ceylon is fascinating as a hero product, similar to Chartreuse. Arrack is something that’s got a huge amount of heritage, it’s one of the oldest spirits around and yet it’s kind of overlooked by us as a trade,” says Mr Lyan Studio founder and renowned bartender Ryan Chetiyawardana.

Ceylon is made from toddy, the fermented sap of the coconut palm’s flower, tapped twice daily by toddy tappers who scale the palm trees. Fermentation occurs naturally as soon as it is placed in handmade ceramic pots, before being distilled and aged in native halmilla wood. The process is rapid, with less than 24 hours to get the fermented toddy to the distillery due to Sri Lanka’s hot temperatures.

Challenging sector

Chetiyawardana adds: “There are a lot of challenges around it and specifics about being in Sri Lanka. It’s kind of hard for other people to enter the category. On one hand you have the benefit of coconut trees being prolific, and on the other hand it’s being able to harvest that. They’re wild plants and will vary, so what you end up getting is this incredibly skilled art of toddy tapping, but like a lot of agriculture it’s a dying art.”

As Ceylon grows its presence, Chetiyawardana notes its role in bars is versatile. “There’s something really nice about having it as a textured spirit, so you have it in a Highball, and it sits in the white spirit category but it almost bridges the gap with that creaminess and body you get in a lighter, matured spirit. We also use it as a modifier between different flavours – it ends up bringing this wonderful floral creaminess,” says Chetiyawardana.

“There’s not much else in the floral space that doesn’t become very dominant. If you use elderflower, jasmine or rose etc, it ends up being quite overt as a flavour, whereas there’s something about arrack’s gentle florality that’s a wonderful underpinning thing to a lot of other flavours. We’ll often use it in the background as a micromodifier. It sits in two spaces for us – one is celebrating the story and what it is as a product and using it as the hero, and then also using it as a bridging modifier.”

As native spirits grow in the global bar scene, Chetiyawardana says consumers are “starting to celebrate diversity more. This isn’t a loss to more mainstream spirits, it’s people wanting to have different things for different occasions”.

He adds that bartenders fall into a “formula”, however spirits such as arrack allow them to “look at other products with heritage and their own sense of connection to a culture and a place”.