Though separated by geography and chronology, the ancient Celtics and the Sümi Naga tribe of Nagaland have something deliciously in common. Mead. Brewed by fermenting honey mixed with water and overripe fruit, the amber-hued drink is said to be the oldest known form of an alcoholic beverage — dating back 6,000 years. It’s even older than wine.

Growing up in the Tsüipu clan in Nagaland’s Zunheboto district, tribesperson Lovi Tsüipu, like the Celts, lived most of her life by the moon calendar. Every year, in July, when the full moon is closest to the summer solstice — known as the ‘Mead Moon’ — she’d watch her clanspeople prepare vats of mead. But with a local twist.

“To make our mead, we gather fruits and berries — especially, the local stronger flavoured amla [gooseberries] — and steep them in fresh spring water and black honey. The honey, which can only be found inside tree trunks or in hives built underground, is more robustly flavoured,” explains the 35-year-old, who, a decade ago, parleyed these ancient techniques and indigenous ingredients into building her own meadery, Tsüipu Heritage Beverages.

Lovi Tsüipu (centre) of Tsüipu Heritage Beverages with her team | Photo Credit: Armeren Aier

She has been running the small-scale business independently out of a modest production unit in Dimapur. Here, at any given time, you can find at least 18 wooden casks filled with a variety of fruit-flavoured meads. These include the signature gooseberry, along with experimental iterations featuring peach, passion fruit, strawberry and dragon fruit. All fermented (for a minimum of 12 months), filtered and bottled on site.

Tsüipu’s wild gooseberry mead

Mead to order

 Making mead is traditionally a man’s purview among the Sümi Naga, and breaking this patriarchal trope was challenging. “Acceptance took a while,” she says. “But, as a business, I faced several challenges, including lack of enthusiasm to buy my mead, as it wasn’t something new for us. I barely managed to sell 200 bottles annually in the first few years. It was the encouraging response from outside the state that egged me to not give up. Today, we produce between 15,000-20,000 bottles a year.” Post-pandemic, her mead — with an ABV (alcohol by volume) range of 6% to 16% — is finding patronage in places as far away as New Delhi and Bengaluru, besides other Northeastern states. All on direct order (from ₹200-₹1,000), for now.

 Tsüipu’s peach and passion fruit mead

States and union territories such as Karnataka and Delhi, she says, have receptive markets thanks to the success of other meaderies, such as Pune-based Moonshine Meadery. This has made introducing newer flavours easier, and “is a good example of how competition can be beneficial”. But she adds that accessing new avenues in states such as Maharashtra, infamous for its high tax on alcoholic beverages, will take time. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises has been giving her brand a boost by taking its mead to various exhibitions and showcases around India, to help promote the drink from Nagaland.

“Ours is the only meadery that we know of in the region,” says Tsüipu, who graduated in Food Processing from SRM University, Chennai, and returned with a clear vision to promote mead as a disruptor to the otherwise fruit wine and beer-dominated alcobev space in the Northeast. “We rely heavily on the use of both local ingredients such as wild basil and the blue prickly-skinned noni fruit, and ancient honey harvesting techniques that not only provide a livelihood to the skilled harvesters, but also preserve their way of life.” She sources rare rock honey from specialised harvesters in Phek, in south-eastern Nagaland. Highly skilled individuals scale precarious rock mountains to forage the opaque honey.

Local wild amla foraged for Tsüipu Heritage Beverages

Rice and shine

Across the border in Meghalaya, Keenan Marak, 25, a member of the Garo tribe, has been attempting to pay homage to the “gastro-cultural treasures” of not just his state, but also its six sister states. Ergo, 7 United, the rice beer brewery he founded in 2022 in his town of Tura in the West Garo Hills.

Keenan Marak of 7 United

“Most of the Northeastern states have their own version of indigenous beer — be it rice beers like zutho and thuthse of Nagaland, or zu from Mizoram,” says Marak, who has been making the Garo tribe’s iteration, the Geographical Indication (GI)-tagged bitchi. “My ultimate goal is to bring rice beer to the fore, and make it as ubiquitous as regular beer across India.” To this end, he recently met Chief Minister Conrad Sangma to ask that bitchi be given a classification of its own as a rice beer and not be tagged under the wines category. “This makes it an uneven playing field, as we’re competing against established wine companies like Sula. The CM has promised to look into this.”

Starting out by selling his beer in recycled PET bottles at local events such as Shillong’s Cherry Blossom Festival and smaller musical festivals, today 7 United is available across the state with as many as 20,000 cans being sold every month at the peak of bitchi season, in winter. In the new year, he plans to look southwards, towards states such as Karnataka and Goa — which have a strong beer drinking culture.

Marak brewing beer

Marak’s version of the 7% ABV beer is a slight riff on the traditional still bitchi made with sticky rice and yeast. The light golden beer is carbonated for a longer shelf life (of six months) and dispensed out of sleek black and white aluminium cans (₹110). “But that’s the only innovation. We make our beer the traditional way, using local sticky rice sourced from farmers. It is brewed with water in clay pots that are blackened over a fire for a smoky-sweet flavour profile. Even the yeast that we use is a tribal preparation called wanti, which imparts an earthy hum of flavour.” He plans to release a slightly stronger version early next year with a higher ABV.

Bitchi made the traditional way

Another tribal favourite, this time of the Dimasa tribe of Assam, judima rice beer was in the news for procuring a GI tag in 2021. Traditionally prepared by women, this custom is carried out to this day by the Judima Traditional Brewers’ Industrial Co-operative Society in Dima Hasao district. It is available across wine shops and handicraft shops in the state.

Royal challenges

Interestingly, this reliance on local ingredients and traditional techniques in alcohol production is not just being seen through the prism of indigenous drinks any more. It is also wetting the whistle of a few Northeast-based IMFL (Indian Made Foreign Liquor) distilleries.

Billing itself as a ‘wet’ style gin, Cherrapunji Eastern Craft Gin was founded last year by Mayukh Hazarika, 43. With sustainability in manufacturing as a key driver, the gin is made with native botanicals such as Meghalayan forest peppers and the GI-tagged Khasi mandarin’s peel.

A farmer harvesting Khasi mandarins in the highlands of Cherrapunji

Botanicals being foraged for Cherrapunji Eastern Craft Gin | Photo Credit: Jezrahiah Judah Lyngdoh

“It was an article in The New York Times about water scarcity in the rainiest place on Earth, Cherrapunji, that was the tipping point for me. As someone who hails from the place, I was deeply disturbed by the irony,” says Hazarika, who uses rainwater harvesting tanks from Australia, and packs his gin (that’s available in Meghalaya and Assam for ₹2,500 and ₹2,800, respectively) in reusable stainless steel bottles printed with depictions of local art.

Mayukh Hazarika of Cherrapunji Eastern Craft Gin

Cherrapunji Eastern Craft Gin

But why haven’t these alcohols found their way to more places in India? Vicky Chand, CEO of Radiant Manufacturers — which has been making 100% corn whiskey in Assam since 2013 — says: “India’s liquor market is highly fragmented, with each state having its own pricing, manufacturing, and distribution policies. This makes it challenging to operate across multiple states.”

For Hazarika, with the Northeast not known traditionally as a manufacturing hub, “building a supply chain system in a fairly modest manufacturing ecosystem was challenging. Also, there was no precedence of international exports in the region”.

Vicky Chand, CEO of Radiant Manufacturers, makers of Castle Hill whiskey

Smaller producers such as Tsüipu and Marak also feel that the obstacles come from important aspects such as market penetration and competition. “At the moment, it’s almost impossible for small businesses like mine to invest heavily in marketing and brand-building to distinguish ourselves,” rues Tsüipu, who is also working hard to petition government regulatory bodies to give mead its own classification apart from ‘wines’.

While, social media and e-commerce portals have helped bring her products to the mainstream, especially post-pandemic, she says they are now tapping into another calling card of the Northeast, events like the Hornbill Festival, “to not just drum up buzz around our products, but to give visitors a taste, so that they might go back and talk about us. Every little bit of help is crucial”.

The Mumbai-based writer is passionate about food, travel and luxury, not necessarily in that order.