A family business from Goa’s spice country.

Stranger & Sons is the gin of Third Eye Distillery, which its founders set up in Goa in 2018; the business magazine Outlook Business gave that year in October 2023, and the Gin Guild’s directory dates the gin brand to the same year. The founders are Sakshi Saigal, her husband Rahul Mehra and her cousin Vidur Gupta, according to the drinks site Drinks Enthusiast, which covered the gin’s British launch in June 2019; the Indian culture site Homegrown describes Gupta as a relative.

The distillery is in Ponda, in South Goa, an area Drinks Enthusiast describes as known for spice farming, and the Gin Guild also places it at Ponda. Stranger & Sons was its first spirit, the Gin Guild says. The website calls it a gin “created & distilled in the mythical land of india,” and sums the idea up in two words: “Inherently Indian.”

The company has grown beyond one bottle. In October 2023 Outlook Business listed Third Eye’s range as Stranger & Sons gin, the Short Story spirits (a gin, a vodka and a rum) and Svami non-alcoholic drinks, and reported that it had acquired Countertop, a bar and beverage consultancy, and raised its money in pre-seed and seed rounds from angel investors and wealthy individuals. Vidur Gupta told the magazine: “We wanted to highlight the young, modern and fresh India.” Third Eye Distillery has owned Stranger & Sons since the gin’s launch in 2018.

Spices, citrus peel and a self-help group.

The gin is built on Indian kitchen spices. Drinks Enthusiast reported in 2019 that it combines juniper and angelica root with botanicals found in Indian household kitchens, naming coriander seed, black pepper and cassia bark alongside a blend of Indian citrus peels, and that it is distilled in small batches in an iStill, a modern still. Homegrown adds nutmeg and mace from spice farms near the distillery. The Gin Guild’s tasting notes list Indian bergamot, pepper and mace. The sources count the botanicals differently, so we give none.

One part of the process has become part of the story. A self-help group of local women peels the citrus on distilling days, Saigal told Homegrown, and the fruit flesh goes back to them to be made into pickles and cordials, which Drinks Enthusiast says provides extra income and reduces waste. The cordials, the company says, go into its gimlets.

The serves are part of the identity too. The website pairs two cocktails with two times of day: “The Dawn,” which it says is represented by the sun insignia on the bottle and served as a gimlet, and “The Dusk,” represented by the moon insignia and served as a Gibson, a martini variation garnished with a pickled onion, which the company presents as a nod to India’s pickling heritage. In June 2019 Drinks Enthusiast reported that the gin was launching to the British on-trade through Scotch+Limon, its exclusive UK distributor, with versions of those two drinks on menus at London bars including Happiness Forgets and Sager + Wilde. Saigal explained the starting point: “As avid gin drinkers, we always heard of India spoken about in gin circles.”

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 three-eyed creature and an old shop sign.

The name joins two ideas. Drinks Enthusiast reported that “Stranger” stands for the diversity of India’s cultures, colours and customs, and that “& Sons” refers to the suffix used by traditional family-owned Indian businesses. The packaging case study published by Packaging of the World on 10 September 2018 develops the second idea: India’s towns and cities, it says, are full of old shop signs carrying “& sons,” the mark of a business started by a family and run across generations, and the founders chose the name in the hope that their gin would lead a new cocktail culture in India.

That case study credits the design to Oveja & Remi, with Stranger & Sons as the client and Goa as the location. It lists a glass bottle printed by flexography and foil. The sun and moon insignia that the company describes give the bottle its two cocktail symbols.

The brand’s story is told as a folk tale. On its website, “The Tale of Stranger & Sons” describes a two-tailed, three-eyed creature living in the jungles of the Western Ghats who once found juniper berries hidden in the secret pocket of a sari blouse; the company says the story of the gin began with her. She is said to appear on full-moon nights, to be seen between dusk and dawn in the bars of Panjim, the Goan capital, and to use her third eye to connect with the people she chooses. The site’s own line is a play on the name: “In a strange situation, no one is a stranger.”

For a design guide, Stranger & Sons shows how a young brand can borrow the authority of an old shop sign and pair it with an invented myth. Compare Short Story, another range from the same company, and Paul John, a single malt also made in Goa. For this guide we use a jungle green, a spice gold and a cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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