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A liquor label, guarantees more than an absence of poison. When it uses a legally standardised name, declares an age, describes a composition or identifies ingredients, those claims must correspond to the product inside the bottle and to the standard governing that category |Image used for representational purpose only
| Photo Credit: File Photo
On August 11, 2026, the Southern Regional Office of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) inspected a licensed distillery in Tamil Nadu. It directed that 11 liquor products not be sold after nature-identical and artificial flavouring substances were detected. On August 13, the Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC) stopped transfers and sales of these products across its network. On August 14, however, FSSAI revoked the prohibition following an appeal and assurance of compliance. The episode raises an unusual question: if intoxicating liquor is constitutionally a State subject, how can a Central food regulator inspect a distillery and determine whether its products may remain on sale?
Entry 8 of List II, the State List in the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution, assigns to States ‘intoxicating liquors’, including their production, manufacture, possession, transport, purchase and sale. Yet alcohol is not constitutionally insulated from every Central law. Entry 18 of List III, the Concurrent List, covers the ‘adulteration of foodstuffs and other goods’, allowing both Parliament and State legislatures to legislate food products. Parliament consequently enacted the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, which consolidates food safety regulation and, under Section 16, empowers the Food Authority to prescribe standards, limits on additives and contaminants, sampling procedures, and enforcement systems. Thus, State excise law governs liquor as an intoxicating commodity, while the FSS framework can examine it as a product consumed by humans.
The connection is explicit in Section 3(1)(j) of the FSS Act. ‘Food’ means any processed, partially processed or unprocessed substance intended for human consumption, and the definition specifically includes an ‘alcoholic drink’. Alcohol, therefore, falls within the FSSAI framework for food composition, additives, contaminants, standards and labelling. Section 26 further places the primary responsibility on the food business operator to ensure compliance with the Act and regulations throughout production, processing, distribution and sale, and prohibits the manufacture or sale of unsafe, misbranded or sub-standard food. The standards themselves are built through a scientific structure established by the Act. Section 13 provides for scientific panels of independent experts, for FSSAI.
A distilled spirit begins with fermentation. Yeast converts sugars derived from molasses, grains, fruits or other agricultural material into ethanol and carbon dioxide. In addition to ethanol, fermentation produces congeners such as higher alcohols, esters, acids, and aldehydes, which contribute to aroma and taste. Distillation separates and concentrates these chemicals, while maturation may introduce further reactions involving wood-derived compounds and oxidation. This explains why the name on a bottle is more than a description of flavour. Regulation 2.8 of the FSS (Alcoholic Beverages) Regulations, 2018 defines whisky as an alcoholic beverage made by distilling fermented extracts of malted cereal grains such as corn, rye or barley, or by using specified grain or agricultural-origin spirits, or mixtures of them. What makes whisky, legally, is therefore not simply its brown colour or recognisable aroma. Its raw materials, composition, and method must meet the standard associated with that name.
