A uniquely Goan spirit? The complex histories of feni in India

Cashew feni, a distilled drink made from cashew apple, is a local spirit mostly associated with the Indian state of Goa. While narratives around the spirit and its Geographic Indicator (GI) protections emphasize the spirit’s uniqueness to Goa, archival sources indicate that the spirit was not always exclusively found there. Cashew feni stems from a long tradition of distillation in South Asia which predated European arrival. Indian distillers across the western coast of India began to use cashew apples in already well-established distillation traditions and even the name “feni” was used by distillers outside of Goa at the end of the nineteenth century. The gradual concentration of cashew spirit and feni production in Goa can be traced to the late nineteenth century when taxation regimes undercut alcohol production in British India. Narratives emphasizing the exclusivity of feni to Goa often suggest that the spirit has been greatly influenced or invented by the Portuguese, overlooking the ways that Goan spirits are part of a larger South Asian tradition that has significant diversity within itself. Although these narratives are useful to market the spirits to an ever-widening circle of consumers they do not engage with the spirits’ broader geographic spread in the past.