PANAJI, Jan 23: Goa’s popular ‘Feni’ can be a leading club or party drink if it is produced with finer flavours, a leading mixologist said.
The liquor is made using either cashew apple or coconut as main ingredient.
“It can be a club drink or a disco drink. If you look at research and filtration techniques, during distillation take the softer flavours to create the feni,” mixologist Shatbhi Basu said.
Basu was in the city yesterday to deliver a key note address during the ongoing conference of stakeholders of Feni, a brew that has got Geographical Indication (GI).
She said Feni is not accepted in pubs or clubs because people think it carries a strong smell but it has huge potential if marketed properly.
“It is very important for us to understand the drink and know its heritage. The most important thing is to get consistency of the product,” she said.
“Good products in the world started out like feni. One such drink is tequila. Similarly, you have Korean Soju. In Japan everyone knew ‘Sake’ but nobody knew Soju… So these are products but they have built them, they have made framework of laws,” Basu, also the country’s one of the first woman bar tenderer, said.
“You should make sure that everyone follows at least a baseline rule then you can differentiate between a mass produced, or artisan one. This will also help the producers who look at the cooperative movement by helping the smaller producers who are not able to market themselves.
“If you have that framework, that is where you have to begin. Once you have good quality of product and packaging, marketing is not a problem,” she said. (PTI)
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