In April 2026, UK retailer Maharaja Drinks introduced Goan feni and a mahua spirit from producer DesmondJi to British shelves for the first time, part of a push to position India's indigenous spirits as a category with global reach.
The comparison to tequila is not new. Trade press has floated the idea since at least 2007, when a Hindustan Times headline asked whether feni, a cashew or coconut spirit distilled in Goa, could follow the path blue agave took from a regional spirit to a global one. Mahua, distilled from the flowers of a tree considered sacred across central India's tribal belt, has more recently entered the same conversation.
What feni and mahua are actually distilled from
Feni comes in two styles. Cashew feni is produced by fermenting and then distilling the juice of the cashew apple, while coconut feni is made from palm sap; commercially bottled versions typically run between 40 and 45 percent ABV, and the spirit is traditionally reduced through a pot-still process that first yields a lower-proof distillate called urrak. Mahua is made differently: producers collect the flowers of the Madhuca tree, dry them, ferment them, and distil the result in pot stills, a process DesmondJi founder Desmond Nazareth has described as yielding what he calls the world's only flower-based spirit. DesmondJi first launched a commercial mahua spirit and liqueur in 2018, sourcing flowers from the central Indian forest belt.
Why feni has legal protection that mahua still lacks
Cashew feni was granted a geographical indication in 2009, making it the first Indian spirit to receive GI status, a designation that legally restricts production of the name to Goa. The state government separately declared feni the Heritage Spirit of Goa in 2016. Goa notified a formal Feni Policy in August 2021, creating a Conformity Assessment Board to inspect distilleries against defined process and product specifications, and the underlying GI registration was renewed for a further ten years in April 2022. The first GI process certificate under that inspection regime was not issued until October 2024, when Bicholim's Cazcar Heritage Distiller became the first operator certified to put the GI logo on its bottles. Mahua has no equivalent national protection. Nazareth has said DesmondJi has been lobbying government to first make mahua a recognised heritage alcohol at the state level, with an eventual GI as the longer goal.
The distribution and excise limits both spirits face
Feni's bigger obstacle has historically been classification rather than production. For decades the spirit could legally be sold only within Goa because it was categorised as country liquor under state excise rules; industry sources say that restriction has eased only recently, with feni now permitted for sale in roughly four states. Export shipments have gone out to the UK, Canada, Australia, Taiwan and Japan, according to Business Standard reporting on the category. Mahua carries its own legacy restriction: colonial-era statutes including the 1878 Bombay Abkari Act and the 1892 Mhowra Act curtailed tribal communities' ability to distil and store mahua flowers, a legal hangover that producers say still shapes how the spirit is regulated today. Mixologist Neil Alexander of The Good Craft Co has said he expects mahua to become what he called the next tequila, or what gin represented five years ago, once a commercial standard emerges. A Goa tourism department official quoted by Business Standard was more cautious, noting that feni lacks the kind of state backing that built Champagne and Cognac into global categories, and that government is inherently wary about actively promoting alcohol.
What this means
What is not yet documented anywhere publicly is a reliable export volume or revenue figure for either spirit, so claims about feni or mahua's trajectory remain closer to industry aspiration than audited trade data. Tequila's own global rise rested on a legally enforced denominación de origen paired with decades of marketing investment; feni has the GI, Goa's enforcement infrastructure is only a year into operation, and mahua has neither a GI nor a single national producer body yet pushing for one.