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“The
Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto… what they sold there was milk
plus something else. They had no licence for selling liquor, but
there was no law yet against prodding some of the new veshches which
they used to put into the old moloko, so you could peet it with
vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other veshches which
would give you a nice quiet horrorshow fifteen minutes admiring Bog
and All His Holy Angels and Saints in your left shoe with lights
bursting all over your mozg.”
—Anthony
Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
Or
maybe a moloko with
knives in it to warm your guttywuts and sharpen you up? Perhaps, sir,
you’d be more satisfied with a chalice of Romulan Ale to put
additional spring into your galactic galliard, eh? Beam me up,
Scotty.
The
reality is that you don’t necessarily need to resort to fantasy to
experience some rather out-there tipples. The following is a short
list of some of those coming to, available at or never to be seen
(mercifully) at your local hooch purveyor.
 What’s
So Fenny?
Fenny
(or feni) is India’s
contribution to the world of “what the $#@! is that?” tipples.
Originating from the state of Goa — where the best is said to come
from today — fenny is a rather unique distillate made from either
coconut-tree sap or the juice of cashew apples (kaju
feni). Cashew fenny is seen more frequently than its
coconut counterpart. It is said that there are approximately 4,000
small distilleries (how many of these are actually of “commercial”
status is hard to say), located mostly in north Goa, that produce
cashew fenny, and 2,000 or so manufacturers who make the coconut
version (most of them located in south Goa due to the abundance of
coconut trees there).
To
make the stuff, cashew apples are crushed (traditionally by hand in a
basin-shaped rock called a combi).
The juice is collected and distilled three times in either earthen or
copper pots. The distillation process (locally called bhatti)
takes place in two tandem pots, the larger called a bhann
and the smaller a launni.
Three grades of liquor are created through the subsequent
distillations.
The
first gives the mildly alcoholic urrac,
which is said to go well mixed with citrus-fruit juice.
(Gentle
reader, allow me to apologize for the repeated and ongoing use of
such cop-outs as “which is said,” “apparently,” “it is
reported,” “somebody said so,” etc. While certain libations
referenced in this essay have been tasted by Your Humble Narrator —
in instances always prefaced by the phrase, “I can faithfully
report beyond any shadow of a doubt that this stuff will kill you,”
or some such disclaimer — others will
not have been, either because I couldn’t get my mitts on any or I
was too chicken to ingest the stuff I could.)
Where
was I? Oh, yeah, right, fenny.
The
second distillation yields the stronger cazulo,
which can be consumed (according to the dubious Internet-generated
info I’m liberally calling “research material”) neat or diluted
depending on “the lining and resistance of one’s alimentary
tract.” Lovely.
Finally,
fenny. The end result
of the third distillation, fenny
has an alcoholic strength of 40 per cent (give or take). In her
seminal work, The Best of Goan
Cooking, Gilda Mendonsa notes, “Feni
is considered a cure-all for any ailment, which is a good excuse for
the serious connoisseur!” Consumed neat or in cocktails, fenny,
for the uninitiated, is something of an acquired taste (that being a
rather dramatic understatement).
Tasting
Note
Maravilha
de Goa Caju Feni
Colour:
clear;
Aroma:
funky, fruity–earthy, grape bubblegum, acetate;
Flavour:
hard to describe — a combination of prune brandy, grappa, anise,
pepper; hot, spicy finish.
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Drinks 
