Arrack

Arrack is a family of traditional Asian spirits with two great and quite distinct traditions: Sri Lankan coconut arrack, distilled from the fermented sap of coconut flowers, and Batavia arrack, distilled in Java from sugarcane molasses fermented with red rice. Smooth, faintly funky and lightly floral in its coconut form, dry, pungent and rum-like in its Batavian form, arrack is one of Asia's oldest distillates and was the backbone of the great punches of the eighteenth century. It should not be confused with the anise-flavoured arak of the Middle East, which is a wholly different drink.