As Goa goes back indoors, a year after it had been celebrating the good news of being a green zone in a country where the coronavirus was spreading fast, it is time to dwell on lighter matters. And so the mind wanders to all things Goan and seasonal, at which the promise in the Budget that there will be a policy for cashew feni comes to mind. It can be counted as good news for heritage lovers of Goa and for the industry. Good news trickles in, it never comes in waves, so when in the middle of the month of March you also got to know that cashew ‘neero’ is being bottled and marketed, the eyebrows did rise up in surprise and you realised that not all is lost, that there are still some well-meaning people out there ensuring that the Goan heritage juice survives in some form or the other. ‘Neero’, bottled or fresh from the farm may never turn out to emerge as a major commercial venture. It, at the most, can be a project by an entrepreneur to give back to Goa and it will at best remain at that. For the commercial earning will always come from the alcoholic products that the cashew juice after the process of distillation gives – urrack and feni. Again, urrack will remain a seasonal drink with little commercial value and feni will remain what the cashew fruit, besides the nut, has always known for at least in Goa. Feni is, undisputedly, the official heritage spirit of Goa. So, what has happened on the cashew plantations and the feni distillation units this season? Feni distillers were looking forward with optimism to the current season hoping that it would resurrect the industry from the depths that it fell too last year. In March 2020, just as the various distillation units were preparing to begin operations, the COVID-19 lockdown was imposed sending the urrack and feni distillation industry into a freefall. The distillers are clear that the pandemic did not just affect them, it actually crippled them. A purely seasonal occupation, the distillation of feni depends entirely on the ripening of cashews and the March 2020 lockdown, followed by further restrictions during the following weeks, dealt a lethal blow to the industry. By the time the restrictions on movements were lifted, the season had ended, and there were no cashews to pluck from the trees and significantly no juice for the distillation process. Despite the losses of the previous year, spirits were up for a much-improved season this year, as the cashew apple ripened on the trees and turned a lovely yellow. But there was a catch. There was a slight delay in starting the season – the first flush of cashew flowering was not optimum which meant that the cashew farmers had to wait for the second flush to ripen – and the unseasonal showers in the last week of February played truant with the harvest. The bright sunlight and the summer heat ripening the cashew apple gave hopes to the feni industry, looking forward to recovering the losses of the past year and keeping the heritage spirit of Goa well bottled and packaged for the retail sales counters across the State for the rest of the year. But again, that did not happen. Though the crushing season usually goes into May, this year almost all of the distillers have already ended the season, and claim that there has been a 50 to 70 per cent drop in the distillation. Last year, 2020, the climatic conditions were good for a ripe harvest, but the pandemic lockdown hit the industry badly. This year it was the climate that played brought down the spirits of the distillers, even while the industry is still to figure out the exact losses of the last season. The heritage spirit, at least on paper, requires to be given a boost. Most of the produce is sold retail in the State? The heritage drink of Goa must be taken beyond. Feni received Geographical Indication (GI) in 2009 and later it was bestowed the title of heritage spirit of Goa, which allowed its sale outside the State. Despite all this, there is little control on the feni distilling industry today and there are hundreds of small distillers producing the brew but not bottling it. Instead they sell it locally to neighbourhood stores, taverns and bars, or even directly to selected customers who are feni connoisseurs and can tell a good drink from an average one by even just a sniff. This doubtless affects the registered industry which has to compete with the small distillers for local sales. Four years ago, in February 2017 the government had sought to appoint an institution to advise it on promoting feni. It was supposed to release a policy on feni and its promotion. But like most plans of the government, this one too has not yet seen the light of day. So again this year the government has announced a feni policy but of course as yet there has been not even a whiff of it. Interestingly, while on the subject of feni, though the government often overlooks the industry, a significant number of village panchayats in Salcete that imposed loc lockdowns last week exempted the coconut feni distillers from the restrictions. The industry needs a policy, but it also needs reforms and one of the main areas is in the bureaucratic process. For a start the State Excise Department has extended the license term to five years, offering rebates for those option to hold licences for three years or five years, while label registration for three years will not be required every year if there is no change in the product and no NOC will be required for import and export of liquor and giving permits online. The first of these – the extended licence – has brought a divided opinion as there are some who welcome it and others who have been indifferent to it. But it requires more. It requires a little handholding from the government to take drink even further.