Feni

Feni is the flagship indigenous spirit of Goa, on the west coast of India, distilled in two great and quite distinct traditions: cashew feni, made from the fermented juice of the cashew apple, and coconut or palm feni, distilled from the sweet sap tapped from the coconut palm. Pungent, fruity and rustic, with a heady, sulphurous funk that mellows into ripe cashew, tropical fruit and warm spirit, feni is a triple- or double-distilled country liquor with a protected geographical indication of its own. It should not be confused with the anise-flavoured arak of the Middle East or with generic palm arrack, though it belongs to the same broad Indian Ocean world of palm and fruit distillates.