A gin from a distillery founded in 1943.

Jaisalmer Indian Craft Gin is made by Radico Khaitan. English Wikipedia records that the company was founded in 1943 as the Rampur Distillery & Chemical Company, in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, and that G. N. Khaitan bought the loss-making distillery from Vishnu Hari Dalmia in 1972. The company is headquartered in Rampur, and English Wikipedia names his son Lalit Khaitan as chairman and managing director and Abhishek Khaitan as managing director. The gin’s product page on Radico Khaitan’s website repeats that history in brief: the company, formerly Rampur Distillery, began operations in 1943.

The gin is not made in the city it is named after. The Spirits Business reported in November 2018 that master distiller Anup Barik makes it in copper pot stills at the Rampur Distillery, in the foothills of the Himalayas, in northern India — the same distillery that makes Radico Khaitan’s Rampur single malt. Jaisalmer itself is far to the west, in Rajasthan; The Gin Guide describes it as “The Golden City,” a former medieval trading centre in the Thar Desert best known for its hilltop fort.

Barik has explained why the gin was made. He told The Gin Guide that there was “no authentic Gin from India,” which led the company to craft one around the country’s spices and botanicals.

Diwali in London, then a Gold Edition.

Jaisalmer’s launch was reported from Britain. The Spirits Business reported on 13 November 2018 that Radico Khaitan had launched the gin in Britain the previous week to celebrate Diwali, selling it at first only through the London retailer The Whisky Exchange, with other British retailers to follow before Christmas. Sanjeev Banga, president of international business at Radico Khaitan, said: “We’re delighted to be launching our first Indian craft gin,” and suggested it as a base for cocktails. It was bottled at 43 per cent alcohol.

Its recipe was built as a map of India. The same report listed eleven botanicals, seven of them Indian and each tied to a region: coriander and vetiver from the north, orange peel from central India, cubeb pepper and lemongrass from the south, Darjeeling green tea from the east and lemon peel from the west. The rest are classic gin botanicals: juniper, angelica root, liquorice and caraway.

Reviewing it for The Gin Guide in 2020, Paul Jackson described a “well-constructed core” of classic botanicals with contemporary layers that connect it to India, and the site suggests serving it with tonic and an orange garnish or in a Negroni. Radico Khaitan’s own description of the botanicals is more poetic: coriander for spice, cubeb for a peppery hint, lemon and sweet orange peel for citrus, and Darjeeling green tea for freshness.

A second gin followed. On 25 November 2022 The Gin Guide reported the launch of Jaisalmer Gold Edition, the second gin in the range, made with eighteen botanicals, fourteen of them from India, including Kashmiri saffron, Darjeeling green tea and Nagpur orange peel. The company says the gin passes through a filter of golden silk filament before bottling. Banga described it as “a refreshing burst of India on your palate.” Its bottle, the report said, was inspired by the sandstone palaces and carved windows of Jaisalmer, with a gold curve echoing India’s carved shrines.

Indian craft gin.

The seven brands in this group are all Indian gins or gin-led ranges: Greater Than, Hapusa, Stranger & Sons, Jaisalmer, Samsara, Terai and Short Story. They come from very different kinds of company. Greater Than and Hapusa are both made by Nao Spirits, and Stranger & Sons and the Short Story range both come from Third Eye Distillery, which Outlook Business reported in 2023 was set up in 2018. Samsara comes from Spaceman & Company, the same magazine reported. Jaisalmer belongs to Radico Khaitan, the spirits company headquartered in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, and Terai to Globus Spirits, whose Terai Litchi & Mulberries gin was made at The India Craft Spirits Co. distillery in Behror, Rajasthan, Ambrosia India reported in December 2024.

Goa is the common thread for several of them. Outlook Business reported in October 2023 that the state saw eight to 10 new gin brands launched every year between 2015 and 2023. In the same report, Nao Spirits’ co-founder and CEO Anand Virmani said the company was able to tie up with an existing manufacturer in Goa and build its own unit within that licensed site, and Samsara’s co-founder Riddhi Aggarwal said the brand had found a distillery in Goa that suited its plans. For that reason, these guides treat the name on the bottle and the place where the spirit is distilled as two separate questions.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who founded it and when, who owns it now, where its gin is made and how its labels and bottles present it — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A blackbuck, a fort and the colours of night sand.

The packaging tells the story of the name. Packaging of the World, which published the project on 30 June 2020, credits the design to Firstbase, an Indian design firm, with Radico Khaitan as the client, and lists a glass bottle with a metallic label. Its description, echoed on the company’s own product page, presents the colours as a picture of the desert: dark black packaging with touches of muted gold, an allusion to golden sand shining against the night sky.

The logo carries the heraldry. Radico Khaitan says it features a blackbuck — the Indian antelope — tied to the Jaisalmer Royal Flag, with Jaisalmer Fort set between its horns as a symbol of royalty, valour and honour, and that traditional Rajasthani motifs fill in the detail. The Gin Guide describes the same device as the fort above a blackbuck, a reference to the coat of arms of the former Jaisalmer State. The company’s product page frames the gin as a tribute to the lifestyle of the Maharajas and Maharanis of the imperial era.

Its spirit comes from Rampur, in Uttar Pradesh; its name, its crest and its colours come from a desert city in Rajasthan.

For a design guide, Jaisalmer shows how a large distiller can build a craft brand from borrowed heraldry and a two-colour palette. Compare Rampur, the single malt from the same distillery, and Greater Than, another Indian craft gin. For this guide we use black, a muted gold and a sand with a capital serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Jaisalmer’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.