Sri Lanka is an island off the southern tip of India, a satellite of the vast Asian continent. Its coasts are lapped by the waters of the Arabian Sea in the west and the Bay of Bengal in the east, crafting it as a gateway between West Asia and South-east Asia. As a result of its location, Sri Lanka has held great strategic importance over the past thousand years, from both commercial and military perspectives. Like Madeira, Malta and Cyprus, the island was long frequented by the British imperial navies as they searched the seas for new lands and resources. And just like these other three, the island eventually fell under British rule, namely from 1815 until 1972, when the empire was at its peak. During this period, Sri Lanka was known as Ceylon, a name the British transliterated directly from the name Ceilao, given to the island by its earliest European conquerors, the Portuguese. The unsuitability of the local climate deterred colonists from any serious winemaking attempts, but the terroir proved very well suited indeed to quenching a new thirst developing in Britain at that time: for tea.
Today, as the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, the island's tropical latitude (between 10 and 5 degrees north) still makes it one of the less likely places on Earth to find winemaking enterprises. But, despite the heat and high humidity it shares with all equatorial islands, viniculture has indeed now been attempted here. The ventures have fallen short of the viticultural success seen in India, but the current allure of winemaking has proved irresistible to a few determined parties. After all, if wines from Indonesian Bali (which has a similar climate to Sri Lanka and occupies the counterpoint latitude on the southern side of the Equator) can make it to European wine shows, why not those from Sri Lanka?
The grapes used to make the small quantity of Sri Lankan wines produced each year are, by necessity, those which have proven capable of bearing fruit in tropical climates. Cardinal is the favorite here, a dark-skinned grape initially developed for the table but now used for winemaking in several hot-climate regions, most notably Vietnam and Thailand. Cardinal was created in 1939 in California as a crossing of Flame Tokay and Ribier. Black Muscat (aka Muscat Hamburg), a member of the prolific and widely traveled Muscat family, is another table grape turned to winemaking purposes here in Sri Lanka. Israel Blue is the variety endorsed by the Sri Lankan government, which undertook a project to plant 8000 seedlings in Markadura. The Api wawamu–Ratanagamu program, managed by the Agriculture and Agrarian Services Ministry, was implemented to prioritize and disseminate those fruits which have the greatest chances of success on the island; Israel Blue was its grape of choice.
As the world continues to warm, and sea levels begin to rise, Sri Lanka's chances of vinicultural success get slimmer each year. Its commercial alcohol production may well become entirely reliant on Arrack, the traditional spirit of which the island is one of the world's largest producers. It is made from fermented flowers, grain or fruit, depending on its precise provenance. In Sri Lanka, the specialty is Arrack made from coconut flowers. The presence of Arrack in many Islamic (and therefore theoretically alcohol-free) states is something of a paradox, as the spirit typically has an alcoholic strength of between 30% and 50% ABV. However, when made from flower sap, Arrack slips through a loophole in Islamic anti-alcohol law. Some interpretations of the Koran outlaw alcohol made from grain or fruit, but do not mention flowers or sap.
Arrack is not to be confused with Arak, the anise-flavored spirit made in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and North Africa. Both names are thought to be derived from the Arabic word arak, which means 'condensation', and has obvious links to the physics of distillation.
