Arrack has been produced in Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), India, Java and the Philippines for centuries, and the process today remains more or less unchanged from that described by Marco Polo in the 13th century.

The drink is obtained from the natural fermentation of coconut flower sap, collected by ‘tappers’ who shimmy up the trunks of coconut trees before dawn. Walking between trunks on tightropes, they tie plastic buckets beneath the flowers they have sliced, to catch the sweet sap as it drips. This ferments in the heat of the sun to produce ‘toddy’, which is then distilled and aged in casks of halmilla wood.

Once revered as a gift from the gods and allegedly reserved for the Sri Lankan royal family, today arrack can also be enjoyed in more prosaic contexts, thanks to the recent global release of a Ceylon Arrack by Rockland Distilleries.

Surprisingly dry, with a hint of grappa, the drink makes an interesting base for cocktails – for example, served up with strawberry tea and a stick of cinnamon; or with lime juice, a spoonful of sugar and apricot brandy.

“Nor have they any wine except such as I shall now describe. You must know that they derive it from a certain kind of tree that they have. When they want wine they cut a branch of this, and attach a great pot to the stem of the tree at the place where the branch was cut; in a day and a night they will find the pot filled. This wine is excellent drink, and is got both white and red. It is of such surpassing virtue that it cures dropsy and tisick and spleen.”

The Travels of Marco Polo, 1292

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