Ceylon arrack

Sri Lankan arrack is made from coconut toddy, the sap that runs from the cut flower spathe of a coconut palm. This distinguishes it from arak and arrack elsewhere in Asia and the Middle East, which may be made from rice, dates, sugarcane or aniseed and are entirely different spirits sharing a name.

The result sits in its own category. It has some of the sweetness and softness of a light rum, some of the fruit of an unaged brandy, and a faint vegetal coconut note that is unlike anything else. It is not coconut-flavoured in the way visitors expect; the coconut is in the origin, not in the taste.

The sap comes from the unopened flower spathe of a coconut palm. A tapper binds and bruises the spathe, then slices the tip, and the sap runs into a clay pot tied beneath. Each tree is visited twice daily.

The remarkable part is the access. Rather than climbing down and up each tree, tappers in the coconut belt string ropes between the crowns of neighbouring palms and walk between them, twenty metres up, balancing on one rope with another as a handhold, carrying pots. It is a highly skilled and genuinely dangerous job, and the number of people doing it is declining. If you get the chance to watch, take it.

Fresh toddy begins fermenting almost immediately from wild yeasts on the flower, and within a few hours it is a cloudy, sour, mildly alcoholic drink of around four to eight percent. It is sold at licensed toddy taverns, drunk within the day, and it does not travel or keep.

It is an acquired taste, sharp and yeasty, and it is worth trying once if you find a tavern. Kithul toddy, tapped from the fishtail palm rather than the coconut, is a separate and rarer product, and the same tree's unfermented sap is boiled down into kithul treacle and jaggery, which are among Sri Lanka's best food products.

Toddy is distilled to produce arrack. The simplest products are pot-distilled and bottled young and clear, sold cheaply and drunk widely. Better producers blend pot and column distillate and age the spirit in vats made from halmilla, a Sri Lankan hardwood, which gives colour and rounds the rough edges without imposing the heavy vanilla and char of oak.

Premium expressions are aged longer and are genuinely good spirits that deserve to be drunk neat. There is also a small movement toward single-batch and estate-specific arracks, which is worth exploring if you have any interest in the category beyond a poolside drink.

The classic Sri Lankan serve is arrack with soda water and a wedge of fresh lime, over ice, in a tall glass. It is refreshing, low in sugar and suits the climate exactly. The other standard is arrack with ginger beer, which is sweeter and works well with a squeeze of lime.

Arrack also substitutes for rum in most cocktails, and the arrack sour, arrack with lime and sugar, is excellent. Bars in Colombo and Galle have started taking it seriously and building drinks around it rather than treating it as a cheap rum stand-in. If you are drinking an aged premium arrack, try it neat first before deciding what to do with it.

There are rules worth knowing. Alcohol is sold at licensed wine stores, supermarkets with a licence, hotels and bars, and the legal purchase age is 21. No alcohol at all is sold anywhere on poya days, which fall on every full moon, roughly twelve or thirteen times a year, and on certain other designated dry days announced with little notice.

Prices are high relative to the cost of living because of substantial excise duty, and imported spirits are considerably more expensive than arrack. Duty free on arrival at Colombo airport is genuinely worth using if you want imported wine or spirits. Arrack itself is cheap, and a bottle of good aged arrack is one of the better things to take home.

Lion is the dominant local beer, with a lager and a strong stout that is genuinely good and considerably heavier than most visitors expect. There is a small but growing craft beer scene in Colombo.

Non-alcoholic Sri Lanka is more interesting. Thambili, king coconut, is sold from roadside stalls everywhere and is the best rehydration on the island. Faluda, a rose syrup, milk, basil seed and ice cream drink, is a Colombo institution. Ginger beer, particularly the local brands, is excellent, and wood apple juice is worth trying once.