Diageo’s Indian subsidiary United Spirits has agreed to reformulate some of its whisky and rum brands to comply with food-safety requirements, a move that could force wider changes across the country’s spirits industry, where similar flavouring practices have been used for years.
United Spirits, which makes McDowell’s, Royal Challenge, Antiquity Blue and McDowell’s No. 1 Celebration Matured XXX Rum, said late Monday that it would align its products with the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India’s (FSSAI) revised requirements, after the regulator raised concerns over the use of flavouring substances in select brands.
“Our products have consistently met all applicable safety and quality standards. We have engaged with the FSSAI on their position of the existing guidelines and have since taken appropriate measures to align our products fully with the revised requirements. Diageo India remains committed to the highest standards of compliance and consumer safety,” United Spirits told Mint in WhatsApp text message, after Reuters first reported the development on Monday.
Company executives told Mint that Diageo India has agreed to reformulate its affected offerings—either by removing the disputed flavouring agents or changing how they are declared on packaging—even as it pursues a separate legal challenge in the Bombay High Court. The company has been given roughly 90 days to liquidate its existing stock in Maharashtra.
Diageo will liquidate its Maharashtra stock within 90 days, its existing stock, and make a front-of-label declaration to say something like “whisky flavoured-spirit” or “rum-flavoured” spirits.
Diageo had not responded to a detailed email sent by Mint until press time.
The move matters because the dispute goes beyond one company or one brand. Industry experts say the FSSAI's interpretation could upend a long-standing manufacturing model for Indian whisky and rum, with implications for product costs, taste, pricing and availability.
The dispute dates back to July, when FSSAI notices were sent to companies across the alcobev industry, including Diageo and Mohan Meakin Ltd, over alleged violations involving added flavours and age claims.
The regulator alleged that manufacturers were using flavours to replicate the natural taste and aroma of rum, brandy, gin, whisky, wine and beer, and were making unauthorized age claims, including declaring an age that did not match the youngest spirit in a blend. Companies were asked to explain why action should not be taken against them under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006.
Diageo had earlier contested a Maharashtra order restricting sales of McDowell's No. 1 Celebration Matured XXX Rum, arguing that the food safety officer who issued it lacked statutory authority and had bypassed the required adjudicatory process.
In a 1 August filing, the company also challenged the timing of the FSSAI's parallel consultation on flavour-labelling rules, calling it “premature, disproportionate and commercially prejudicial” to keep the prohibition in place while the regulator was still reviewing those very rules.
At the heart of the dispute is the label "artificial flavour (rum)". The FSSAI’s position is that any rum flavour must reflect natural ingredients, fermentation and maturation, not additives. The Bombay High Court heard the matter on 10 August and has sought the Centre’s response by 19 August.
Manufacturers argue that FSSAI-approved, nature-identical flavours have long been used in Indian Manufactured Foreign Liquor because prolonged barrel ageing is commercially unviable at India’s scale. They also point out that these flavours comply with the FSSAI’s own 2018 regulations, BIS rules and state excise laws, with batches routinely tested in government laboratories.
The industry's central argument is straightforward: there may not be enough mature spirit available to rapidly reformulate India's mass-market whisky and rum brands.
“India's whisky, brandy and rum market is approximately 432 million cases annually, representing approximately 1.73 billion litres of actual alcohol content…If FSSAI's interpretation requires these categories to be fundamentally reformulated around category-specific character spirits, India simply does not have this scale of matured whisky spirit, grape-derived brandy spirit or character rum distillate available today. This cannot be achieved overnight. It requires raw materials, capacity, capital and, critically for whisky, years of maturation,” said Poonam Chandel, an industry veteran.