What People Drink in Chennai: Traditional Alcoholic Beverages

Chennai sits on India’s Coromandel Coast, where palmyra groves, coconut palms, and a humid tropical climate shaped what people once drank. The city’s heritage leans toward low-ABV palm ferments and palm distillates, tempered today by state alcohol policy that channels most legal sales through TASMAC shops.

While you won’t see toddy huts inside Chennai, the memory of kallu (palm wine), palm arrack, and medicinal arishtams lingers in kitchens, coastal villages, and nearby regions. What follows is a clear look at how these traditional drinks are made, taste, and where you can encounter them now.

Kallu is a naturally fermented palm wine made from the sap of coconut or palmyra inflorescences. Tappers collect the overnight flow before sunrise; indigenous yeasts promptly convert sugars to alcohol, yielding a frothy, milky-white drink that is best within hours. Fresh toddy typically sits around 4–6% ABV, edging toward 7–8% if allowed to ferment longer, with a yeasty nose and notes of green coconut, palm sugar, and mild lactic tang.

Historically, Chennai’s coastal workers and fishers favored early-morning or late-afternoon kallu for refreshment in the heat, and cooks used it to leaven appam in parts of Tamilakam. Today, commercial sale of toddy is not permitted in Tamil Nadu, so you won’t find legal toddy shops in Chennai. Travelers curious about the flavor often try it in neighboring Kerala, where licensed toddy shops operate, while in the Chennai region the drink survives more as culinary memory and seasonal tapping traditions in villages along the coast.

Tamil Nadu’s state tree, the palmyra (panai), thrives in the sandy, wind-swept belt south of Chennai, while coconut palms line backyards and lagoons. Both yield kallu, yet they diverge in character: palmyra toddy tends to be earthier, with a faint bitter-almond snap and caramel undertones from higher phenolics, whereas coconut toddy is lighter and more floral, echoing tender coconut water on the palate.

Method and strength are similar—fresh sap ferments spontaneously to 4–6% ABV—but Chennai’s heat accelerates souring by midday. Around Mahabalipuram, fishers historically preferred brisk, just-tapped coconut kallu on working days, while palmyra kallu was prized inland and appears in regional cooking, including as a traditional fermenting aid for rice batters. In the city proper, you’ll more often hear these differences discussed than find them poured, a result of current state rules, yet the coastal terroir still frames how locals describe and remember their toddy.

Palm arrack is a distilled spirit made from fully fermented palm toddy, historically produced in the Madras Presidency and widely traded under colonial regulation. Small pot stills concentrated the wash, with careful cuts to remove harsh fractions; some arracks were rested in neutral vessels, others briefly in wood. Bottled strength typically ranges from 33% to 45% ABV. Expect a light-bodied spirit with soft esters, hints of coconut flower, vanilla, and a delicate spice finish.

Under the British, arrack was taxed, standardized, and sold through licensed shops in and around Madras. Today, Tamil Nadu’s retail channel (TASMAC) focuses on Indian Made Foreign Liquor, and palm arrack is not legally sold in Chennai. To experience the style nearby, travelers look to Sri Lanka for Ceylon arrack or to Puducherry, where small producers have experimented with arrack-based infusions. As with any country liquor, avoid illicit versions; improperly distilled arrack can contain dangerous levels of methanol.

The word “punch” likely stems from the Hindi and Persian panj/panch—meaning five—evoking five core elements: spirit, citrus, sugar, water, and spice. In 17th–18th century Madras, East India Company factors and clubmen mixed palm arrack with lime, jaggery syrup, cool water or lightly brewed tea, and grated nutmeg. Served in bowls over chunky ice, it drank bright and aromatic at roughly 15–20% ABV depending on dilution, with citrus oils, caramel from jaggery, and warm spice on the nose.

That colonial ritual still echoes in Chennai’s better bars. Because palm arrack is not commonly available in the city, bartenders often recreate Madras punch with Indian rum as a stylistic stand-in, keeping the jaggery, lime, and nutmeg to preserve the profile. Ask for an arrack-forward version if a venue stocks Sri Lankan arrack, and pair it with fried seafood or spiced snacks—a nod to how punch once bridged sea air, heat, and the social life of Mount Road clubs.

Beyond convivial drinks, Chennai’s traditional alcohol landscape includes medicinal ferments. Arishtam (and the related asavam) are Ayurvedic and Siddha tonics made by fermenting botanical decoctions—think dashamoola (ten roots), arjuna bark, raisins, spices—with jaggery or honey. Left to ferment in earthenware or glass for weeks to months, they self-generate alcohol typically in the 5–12% ABV range, concentrating aromatics and preserving the formula.

Flavors are bittersweet and spiced—raisin, clove, warming herb tones—with a gentle alcoholic lift. These are not recreational beverages; they are regulated and sold through licensed Ayurvedic pharmacies across Chennai, often taken in spoonfuls after meals or per practitioner advice for digestion, convalescence, or postpartum care. For travelers, they offer a window into how alcohol traditionally functioned in South India not only as a social lubricant but also as a medicinal solvent and preservative.

Long before colonial clubs, the subcontinent knew sura, a grain-based fermented drink described in ancient Sanskrit literature and echoed in Tamil sources that discuss intoxication and temperance around “kal.” Sura was typically brewed from rice, barley, or millets: grains were malted or cooked, cooled, and left to ferment with ambient yeast, producing a malty, bready beverage roughly in the 6–10% ABV band, with light sourness and low carbonation.

You will not find commercial sura in Chennai today, but the idea surfaces in academic talks, museum programs, and occasional food-history pop-ups that explore early South Asian drinking traditions. For context, festival cookery in Tamil homes still preserves the technique of using natural ferments (including toddy in some regions) to leaven rice batters, offering a culinary echo of older grain-based brews without serving them outright.