Urrak: Goa’s liquid summer soul

In the old days, summer was when one left Goa. Old Portuguese houses got stiflingly hot without air conditioning, foreigners returned home, the parties stopped, and the markets shut.

I’ve lived here on and off since the early 2000s, moving further and further away from the hippie haunts of my 20s (they don’t exist anymore), and closer towards the Goa of the Goans. Now, decades later, I live in a small, hidden vaddo, or neighbourhood, whose name is shared with all its inhabitants (except mine). Elaine, my neighbour, knows the trees in my compound better than I do (her home has been in her family since 1871), I never lock my door, the poi man leaves bread at my doorstep for me — whether I pay him or not — every day, and my cat is fed and my garden watered by Bani next door (because I gave her son my old guitar).

I love my life here. And it has made me fall in love with summer. Summer is when Goa comes alive — there is so much produce! Every morning, my garden gives me something new: jackfruit, fresh kokum, cashew apples and, of course, mango. Everywhere, old Goan ladies sit on the side of the road selling mangoes from their gardens. Anyone who has had a homegrown Mankurad can’t remember what an Alphonso is. They’re not cheap, but worth every bite.

Spirit of the cashew

The local markets are teeming too, with neero (cashew apple juice), watermelon, oysters, limes, and urrak. The alcoholic beverage made from fermented cashew apple juice is the elixir of summer, the foti (crown) on Goa’s susegad reputation, and reason enough to suffer being sober the whole year.

Drinking urrak turns me into an old Goan aunty: I get more confident, adopt their cheeky nonchalance. I become the drunk jester, and at night, I dream of walking through cashew and coconut trees lit by moonlight.

So ingrained is the cashew tree in Goan culture that it’s hard to remember that it is not indigenous to the State. The Portuguese brought it with them more than 500 years ago, via Brazil, where cashew is originally from. (They probably brought chilli, tomato, guava, pineapple and potato on the same trip).

The Portuguese were intelligent agriculturalists. In a move reminiscent of permaculture, which uses trees to redesign landscapes, they used cashews’ fondness for infertile soil and its strong roots to plant along Goa’s coastal belt — getting them to bear the brunt of the winds and salt of the sea, becoming protectors for the farmlands in the interiors. The fact that they also made a lot of money trading the cashew nut is pure permaculture (with its focus on ‘obtaining a yield’, monetary or otherwise).

The tree is a gift that keeps giving: its roots help in water percolation, it produces a wealth of organic manure by leaf shedding and, being a perennial crop, it provides a healthy amount of carbon sequestration. It grows so well in Goa that cashew plantations do not use any form of chemical intervention.

Interestingly, the Brazilians have never discovered the art of making alcohol from the fruit. In Goa, the word ‘urrak’ (much like arrak, arak, raki — all old names for local alcohol) has nothing to do with the cashew. It just means the first distillate of a fruit, from an older world of palm sap and toddy. I can just imagine the first Goan who picked up a ripe fallen cashew apple, its juice oozing and fermented in the sun, drinking it greedily, swaying that gentle urrak sway, and proceeding to have the siesta of their life.

The making of urrak
| Video Credit:
Footage | Ashok Malkarnekar

A story of continuity

Sticking to cashew’s inherent sustainable qualities, the ripe fruit can only be collected from the orchard floor and then de-seeded. By mid-morning, the apples are tipped into shallow granite-lined stone pits. Then comes the oldest technology in the distillery: human feet. Foot-crushing, known as koimbi in Konkani, extracts the juice, which runs into clay fermentation vessels. The leftover pulp is returned to the orchards as fertiliser. Nothing is wasted.

Urrak is the product of the first distillation. The first batch, known as pochek, emerges around February, but lacks the depth of flavour desired by connoisseurs. By March or April, urrak reaches its peak, and for a few fleeting weeks, which coincide with the hottest time of summer, we receive the elixir that elevates summer into a delirium of joy.

Its story is not about reinvention or disruption, but continuity. Returning season after season to the same orchards, the same copper stills, the same families still making it. It is community-driven and remains one of the last truly pre-industrial spirits, refusing to be mass produced. So, it doesn’t matter how much money you have or how powerful your contacts, if you haven’t been invited to sit on your Goan neighbour’s balchao to have a glass of urrak from the family’s favourite cashew orchard, you haven’t tasted the real thing.

And the real thing stinks! Its overpoweringly sweet funkiness is hard to cover up in a sophisticated cocktail. You don’t drink urrak in air-conditioned rooms (Goans say you can catch a cold because it is so naturally cooling), you shouldn’t drive after drinking it. In fact, you can’t do much of anything after a couple of glasses. All this to say urrak defiantly resists any attempt to gentrify it.

Its short window, the time it takes to acquire the taste, its down-to-earthness and its humility have no place in shiny new Goa. And thank god. So yes, I will be gatekeeping my favourite spot, where you will find me, feet by the river with rawa fried lepo, or sole fish (and oysters, if I’m lucky), and a chilled urrak nimbu soda. Bliss.

The writer is a permaculture farmer who believes eating right can save the planet. You can follow her @2ndna.tur3.