How a Sanskrit word for juniper became a gin.

Hapusa began with an ingredient rather than a recipe. Aparajita Ninan, who co-created the gin and is Nao Spirits’ co-founder and creative head, told Brummell magazine in July 2022 that the founders had not known juniper grew in the north of India until they visited Khari Baoli, the spice market in Delhi. There they found very small amounts of a Himalayan juniper berry and were told that its Sanskrit name was Hapusa. That, she said, was when both the story of the gin and its name came about. Anand Virmani, Nao’s co-founder and chief executive, tells it the same way on The Gin Guide: a shopkeeper in Delhi’s spice markets showed him a juniper with bigger berries and a far stronger aroma than any he had seen, and named it in Sanskrit.

The pair, who are married and business partners, had been distilling at home on a tiny pot still in a spare bedroom, Virmani writes. Nao itself grew out of a Delhi bar: Business India reported in 2021 that Virmani co-owned the bar Perch with Vaibhav Singh, and named Abhinav Rajput as a further partner. A July 2025 article in The Whiskey Wash describes the company as founded in 2016 by Virmani, Ninan and Singh, with Rajput joining later.

Virmani writes that the Himalayan gin was actually developed before Greater Than, Nao’s London Dry, but that the team held it back so that the more approachable gin could build the category first. Greater Than came out in 2017. Hapusa followed in July 2018, according to Diageo India, and Nao says it launched in Goa and the UK at the same time, with an appearance at the gin festival Junipalooza.

Foraged juniper, Indian botanicals and a sipping gin.

Ninan told Brummell that Hapusa’s juniper is foraged at about 10,000 feet in the Himalayas, and that its bold, aromatic character led the founders to make a gin meant for sipping. Nao calls Hapusa a Himalayan Dry Gin; Diageo India’s 2025 announcement describes it as a super-premium Himalayan gin made with foraged Himalayan juniper. Business India listed its botanicals in 2021 as Himalayan juniper, gondhoraj lime, turmeric, ginger, cardamom, almond, mango and coriander seed, and The Gin Guide gives its strength as 43 per cent on a grain base.

Like Greater Than, it is distilled in a copper pot still at Nao’s small distillery in Goa, which Business India placed in Margao. Nao’s tasting note promises pine forests and wildflowers on the nose and an earthy palate. The serve is part of the identity. Ninan’s own preference, she told Brummell, is Hapusa straight from the freezer at what the brand calls “mountain temperature”, poured into the glass and sipped slowly, or a Hapusa martini at a bar.

The gin’s story has also reached the screen. The Whiskey Wash reported in July 2025 that the American filmmaker Thomas Fitch had released Hapusa – A Truly Indian Gin, a 13-minute documentary on Nao and its Himalayan gin. In the film Virmani describes the juniper as hand-foraged from the Himalayas, the article says, and the Gin Guild’s June 2025 report repeats that Hapusa is the Sanskrit word for juniper.

Design and documentation.

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 purple bottle, a mountain label and a new owner.

Hapusa’s makers have explained its packaging in their own words. In the Brummell interview, Ninan said the design work began once the recipe was settled, and that the bottle, label and cork top were planned together, because people drink with their eyes before they buy. The deep purple of the bottle, she said, was chosen to match the exact hue of a ripe juniper berry. The shape of the label was drawn to suggest the wide Himalayan landscape, and its golden strokes stand for the pine needles on the forest floor the founders walked through. Above all, she said, the design of both Nao gins was meant to reflect the modern India they lived in and to avoid colonial stories and Indian clichés. Virmani made the same point on The Gin Guide: no elephants or peacocks on the bottles.

The company behind the bottle has since changed hands. United Spirits, the Diageo-controlled business that trades as Diageo India, agreed in March 2022 to buy a 22.5 per cent minority stake in Nao, Business Today reported, and raised it to about 30 per cent in 2023, according to Just Drinks. A United Spirits stock-exchange filing dated 26 June 2025 says it then completed a deal giving it 97.07 per cent of Nao, which became a subsidiary, with a small second tranche left for later. Diageo India said Virmani would continue to lead Nao.

For a design guide, Hapusa shows how a single ingredient — a berry, its colour and its Sanskrit name — can set the bottle, the label and the serve of a spirit. Compare Greater Than, its London Dry sibling from Nao Spirits, and Stranger & Sons, another gin distilled in Goa. For this guide we use juniper purple, pine gold and snowline with a calligraphic serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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