Wild Tiger, described as India's first super-premium rum brand, is to enter the travel retail market in India this month. 

The brand recently had a soft launch in the UK at the UK Rumfest and has also entered the UAE domestic market. 

Wild Tiger Rum was conceptualised and is owned by drinks entrepreneur Gautom Menon. It is said to be India’s first rum to be produced from a blend of molasses and cane spirit. 

He said: “Traditional Indian rum is usually just 100% molasses. Wild Tiger predominately has the same base but it is also blended with some percentage of cane juice spirit, which gives the final blend a lot of aromatic notes and depth in flavour. 

“For maturation, we use only American oak wood barrels from Kentucky, USA. We char the barrels to reactivate the wood and the many natural flavours in them are imparted into the spirit over time. 

"Our rums are a blend of anything between two to five years. The molasses rum is derived from multi-column stills production and the cane juice spirit from double distillation in pot stills.” 

Menon said the brand captured "the spirit of India in a bottle". The origins of the rum can be traced back to ancient India and the tiger imagery embraces the national animal of the country. "It makes this a very captivating and novel gifting solution too," he said. 

Menon said that the rum’s packaging reflected the fact that no two tigers share the same stripe pattern – so the stripe design of the sleeve has been designed and cut to ensure that no two bottles are alike. The velvet tiger print sleeve is made using recycled materials and the glass bottles are made from recycled glass. 

Additionally, Menon said that 10% of profits will be donated to tiger conservation organisations in South India. 

The brand owners are in talks with other Asia Pacific travel retailers, he added. 

In the domestic market, the brand is slated for registrations in the USA and will also be available in the UK and Canada before April 2016. “Our goal is to have extensive presence in at least 16 countries by the end of 2016,” said Menon.