Hello and welcome to Give Me Weird Drinks, a newsletter for exploring the world of beverages! Today we’re going back to the island of Sri Lanka for the finale of a two-part series about arrack, a spirit made from fermented coconut palm nectar.
Lionel Christy Fernando walks between coconut palms, harvesting arrack.
Sri Lankan arrack leapt into the European imagination after it was mentioned by Marco Polo in his 13th-century travelogue, The Travels of Marco Polo. There, he wrote of “wine drawn from trees.”
But before Polo could make his famous journey and write about arrack and coconuts, “Indian nuts” as he called them, Arab traders has already brought distillation to the island—or at least the generic term for distillate, araq. On Sri Lanka, locals used heat and condensation to concentrate and intensify the flavors of their spontaneously fermented coconut tree wine into something more potent. In fact, arrack’s track record, at least from written accounts, is even older than other well-known spirits, like scotch whisky, which didn’t make it into the written record until 15th century.
If you missed it, the first installation on arrack covered the scary process for collecting the ingredients necessary to make the spirit.
In some ways, the steps for making arrack are quite different than those of other spirits, particularly those made from grains. A major difference is the timeline of distillation.
Because it is usually already fermenting by the time it is collected, coconut toddy traditionally had to be distilled within 24 hours of its harvest.
Today, distilleries have managed to give themselves a few more hours before they need to distill, according to Michelle Gunawardana, who has studied the process and history of arrack production and wrote The Adventure of Arrack. After measuring acidity and alcohol content, modern operators filter and store toddy in ceramic-lined tanks, a storage method that permits a few more hours of toddy collection before distillation begins.
Toddy is pumped from a tanker truck into a filtration system at Rockland Distilleries
Like all spirits, arrack leaves the still as a clear liquid. Licensed distilleries will then add water to the spirit, bringing it from around 60% alcohol to 40% or slightly less. The white arrack at Rockland Distilleries retains the slight coconut and light rice flavors of the toddy, but it’s joined by aromas of banana, nutmeg, and its acidity has been concentrated. It’s reminiscent of some filtered sojus or sakes.
Distillers need the toddy of four to six coconut trees to make a single bottle of arrack.
Unaged white arrack and aged arrack at a tasting.
While “young” white arrack is perfectly acceptable for some, others prefer something that’s been aged. For Sri Lankans looking to take a little heat out of their arrack, there’s halmilla wood. A tropical hardwood native to Sri Lanka, halmilla serves as the perfect material for making vats to store and age arrack, transforming it into an almost buttery, copper-colored, vanilla-soaked masterpiece.
Vats made of halmilla wood are used to age arrack. Some arrack is aged for 15 years or more.
After being aged in vats—some the size of small bedrooms—and blended, arrack bounces between the sweet—sometimes fruity—burns of rum, brandy and bourbon, while retaining a subtle nuttiness and savory coconut aroma. In fact, despite being made entirely of coconut blossom nectar, yeast and water, there’s nothing overwhelming about the coconut flavor: don’t expect this to be a bottled version of a coconut cream pie.
Today it may be hard for many to find arrack outside of Sri Lanka, but it wasn’t always that way. It’s no coincidence that at about the same time European traders and colonizers, including the British, began leaving their shores for Asia, they also developed a taste for arrack.
In fact, bouleponge, or what many simply call “punch” today, arguably owes its existence to arrack.
Accounts in letters and books dating back to the 17th century describe a five-ingredient punch. It consisted of arrack, sugar, lime or sour citrus juice, water and spice. In other words, arrack was one of the founding members of modern mixology. (While some may argue that there were many different types of arrack, or spirits, generally, coconut arrack was widely produced from its earliest days.)
Moreover, the drink Europeans began calling punch wasn’t invented by Europeans. Rather, it was based on a drink familiar to those living on the Indian subcontinent when Europeans arrived. “It’s not impossible that Rum Punch could be two thousand years old,” writes liquor historian David Wondrich, in his book Punch: The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl.
While Europeans didn’t invent arrack, they could certainly drink it. One account from the East India Company noted the consumption of 164 gallons of arrack at a single British trading post in a just a year. Recognizing its popularity, Europeans also tried to control the sale of arrack.
For Sri Lanka, which saw periods of Portuguese, Dutch and eventually British influence, colonial whims dictated arrack’s popularity and availability in European markets.
Arrack remained popular into the early 1800s, noted Gunawardana. But eventually taxes imposed by importing countries, coupled with trade policies that encouraged the lucrative sugar and rum production of Caribbean colonies, brought about the end of widespread arrack consumption.
Visitors to Sri Lanka will see that locally-produced arrack is as popular as ever. Meanwhile, it’s making somewhat of a comeback elsewhere. One of the island’s major four distilleries, Rockland Distilleries, ships its “Ceylon Arrack” to bars in London and Singapore.
For Weird Drinkers in the U.S., Chicago-based spirits company MESH & Bone sells a 15-year-old aged arrack, labeled as “arakku” and sourced from Sri Lanka’s W.M. Mendis Company distillery. “It’s unique,” said Scott Crist, founder of MESH & Bone, of his decision to source and import arrack. “It’s hard to bring a unique taste to the U.S.”
Like the first traders who introduced distillation to Sri Lanka, and Marco Polo, and the Portuguese, Dutch and British traders who eventually followed him, Crist discovered arrack for the first time on a trip to the island. And like many before him, Crist, too, fell in love with one of the oldest spirits in the world.
Arrack is a spirit so deceptively fundamental that it’s made by heating and condensing a single ingredient—fermented coconut tree sap—harvested by the dedicated few who climb trees with nothing more than a knife, a bucket and a taste for something different.
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