Indri Agneya
Peated Indian Single Malt | 46% ABV
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
Another bang for buck winner from India’s Piccadilly
A Quiet Indian Hat-Trick
A couple of years ago, seemingly out of nowhere, Indri Trini took the whisky stage by storm. At £40 - or thereabouts - this flavour bomb from India’s Piccadilly Distillery quickly gained a lot of fans, amongst them Ogilvie, yours truly and our chieftain Wally.
While some found it to be a bit (too) loud on funky flavour, I simply couldn’t get enough of the stuff.
I didn’t exactly keep track, but I think I’m on my fourth bottle, and have gifted probably another three or four to family and friends since. Then came the ‘Drù’, a cask strength, bourbon cask-matured beast of a whisky, equally packed with flavour and, probably thanks to the tropical environment it was matured in, with the bourbon casks cranked up to a tropical 11.
Despite talk and rumours about them releasing some peated whisky on a large scale, and apart from a few lucky ones who got to try some of that in the form of single casks at festivals (particularly the Limburg festival in Germany), we didn’t immediately see one being widely available. Until now that is.
The Indri Agneya (I’m guessing Agneya being a Hindi word derived from the Ancient Greek ‘Agnes’ meaning ‘pure’) only just popped up at one of my local stores a few weeks ago. Having become somewhat of an Indri fanboy, I quickly made sure I bagged one. At €45 (£39 once more) it was an absolute no-brainer; even if it wouldn’t live up to my expectations, it still wouldn’t be a disappointment. If that makes sense.
Review
Indri Agneya, Peated Indian Single Malt, matured in bourbon and sherry casks, 46% ABV, Non chill-filtered, Natural colour
€45 paid (£39) and becoming widely available
What’s remarkable, or at the very least worth pointing out, is how Indri has managed to make a name and build a reputation with little to no marketing or advertising involved.
From a small scale distillery we might expect keeping the marketing and advertising at a minimum, but Piccadilly isn’t exactly small scale. Two mash tuns with a combined capacity of 11 tons; eight washbacks of 60,000 litres each, three 25,000 litre wash stills and two 15,000 litre spirit stills means they can make up to four million litres of new make malt spirit a year.
In terms of capacity, that puts them in the same league as Glenallachie, Aberlour, Craigellachie and Benrinnes. And the ‘malt spirit’ bit is important here because they also produce grain whisky on a much larger scale. So in that regard, simply leaving it to the whisky to do the talking for itself and relying on word of mouth, for many of their export markets, it might look like a bit of a gamble; but it seems to have worked out quite well for them. They even sneaked an OSWA nomination in 2024 (speaking of which, if you haven’t voted for the 2025 OSWA nominations yet, they close in a little over a week!).
This one also seemed to just pop up out of thin air. No teasers, no fancy advertising, just quietly released out into the wild. Whether that’s incredibly naïve or a sign of being very confident about your product, I’ll leave for you to decide: but you can’t deny the fact that this almost ‘guerilla -esk style’ of releasing their whiskies has paid off in the past.
There are also - it must be mentioned - a lot of Indri Reviews out there that have been built upon free bottles and supplied whisky. As long as it’s disclosed. But, just to be clear, in this scenario as with all the Piccadilly bottles reviewed on Dramface thus far - for Wally, Ogilvie and myself - these have all been purchased ourselves. We still love ‘em. We can see why they’d be keen to get the word out there in such a fashion. The confidence is deserved.
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
Another bang for buck winner from India’s Piccadilly
Nose
Elegant and well-balanced mixture of peat, honey, sweet apples, figs and plums with a sweet, mild yet distinctive smokiness running throughout all of these, tying things together. If you dig past that there’s a whiff of antiseptic, but nothing as outspoken as in, say, Laphroaig. Overall it’s rich, yet mellow and pleasant.
Palate
The peat and smoke are more at the heart and centre of it all. But immediately after that there’s still all that mellow sweetness of honey and fruit (berries and forest fruit and even stewed pears now, rather than apples). There’s toffee and cold brew coffee before turning mildly spicy at the end with hints of clove and some pepper as it goes into a warming, woody, spicy finish.
The Dregs
Another excellent bang for your buck whisky.
I don’t really understand how they are capable of releasing these in that £40-£45 price range. Surely they must make a profit.
The inner cynic in me would argue that it just might mean some of the other players out there, let’s call them Allan Mac and friends, are sometimes taking the mickey when determining their prices… But let’s not get negative and just take the moment to celebrate what we have here.
Very approachable, but in the best of ways as some ‘easy going’ whiskies can sometimes become somewhat dull or overly simple or straightforward. This is none of that, rather the opposite.
An excellent, no-nonsense, easy-drinking yet still engaging, fun whisky, which would be happy to just be a background sipper, but will offer enough to keep you entertained and engaged should you choose to give it your full attention.
I’ll admit that it took me a bit of time to fully recognise its potential and I initially put this down as a decent 6/10, but I think that’s more on me than on the actual whisky. Roughly a third into the bottle, everything has just ‘clicked’ and now I find it increasingly difficult to reach past it. What it might lack a bit in ‘complexity’ or texture, it more than makes up for in flavour. It sits bang in the middle of the crossroads between all the good things you can expect from a well put-together whisky with elements of bourbon casks, sherry casks and peated malt. Easy going, yet somehow spot on.
I predict this to be a contender in more than one category in the OSWAs once more in the future. Lights out! Guerilla radio!
It’s getting a seven.
Score: 7/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. EA
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