An enduring spirit
It has been a hundred-year saga. Rockland the family-run distillery, as they look back on a long, rocky road, can take pride in their signature “resilience and grit” – an enduring spirit that carried them through the Great Depression, fire and the tsunami.
The story begins not in 1924 really but millennia ago, ‘palm wine’ being first recorded in 800 BC. As Amal de Silva Wijeyratne, Managing Director, says it is “one of the oldest spirits of the world”; Marco Polo mentioning it in connection with ‘Seilan’, being our own blend “like Scotch is there for Scotland”…
Artist’s impression: The original column stills at Magalkanda
We meet the two guiding spirits of Rockland, Derek de Silva Wijeyratne and son Amal – the third and fourth generations respectively who are Chairman and Managing Director.
The two charismatic men uphold the tradition inherited from J.B.M. Pereira, a lawyer who gave up his profession to take up the trade.
The first glint of Rockland’s pioneering spirit is seen when ‘JBM’ went to India and learnt the ropes, and advertised in an Indian broadsheet for a distiller. An Irishman was chosen and brought over to Ceylon.
The government cutting down the arrack quota and the Great Depression would take their toll, but with his nephew Carl Wijeyratne (father to Derek and ‘Papa’ to Amal) who was the rock to JBM’s visionary spirit, they got through.
As Derek says this resilience is ingrained in Rockland, and it helped when the infamous Business Turnover Tax was imposed or when in 1989, a fire burnt to ground the distillery or when the bottling plant was devastated by the tsunami.
At one point, when there just wasn’t enough matured arrack to make Rockland’s blend, they withdrew from the market rather than provide a product ‘less good’.
From the press: The article mentioning the company in 1924
Today Derek takes a more leisurely role having handed over to Amal and his other son Devinda, like Carl himself passed the responsibility on to Derek. Caring for the staff is ingrained too, Carl having set up a fund for his staff long before EPF was thought of.
The de Silva Wijeyratnes have a wealth of anecdotes which get passed down over family dinners at home. One involves the time when the Premier of the time – once a hearty ‘eating drinking man’ – suddenly turned against arrack and was wondering “whether there should be control on liquor.”
The Association of Distillers panicked and asked Carl to go over to India where prohibition had already been imposed. The Indian Commissioner General of Excise, whom he met there, would moan to Carl that his cook had been distilling spirit for two years secretly in the kitchen with him not knowing! Illicit liquor and no revenue was the order of the day.
Such stories, many of them over decades, were what prompted Rockland in 2016 to come up with the book ‘The Adventure of Arrack’, written by Derek’s own niece Michelle Gunawardana (daughter of Trevor, Derek’s brother-in-law who was master distiller at Rockland). Derek would grumble at first about having to sit down and pour out anecdotes but the book won a Gourmand cookbook award – the first Lankan book to do so.
A film also was made of readings from the book to mark the firm’s centenary, the readers being Ashan Dias, Corrine Almeida and Nimmi Harasgama.
Behind Rockland is a tale of an artisanal craft that is arrack-making. Rockland being the only Sri Lankan distiller to have its own bank of coconut estates, they believe in getting the ‘best toddy’.
The original distillery
Toddy tappers still brave the dizzy heights and Amal thinks they should be paid the same respect as winemakers in France. Despite being the world’s first certified green distillery that is carbon-free, many elements at Rockland are traditional. Traditional coir ropes and clay pots are used for tapping and storing and Amal says there are families making a good living making clay pots.
Derek still tastes all samples distilled and also before bottling, to ensure the quality is consistent. The aging is all natural, done in vats made of jak wood, teak or halmilla, the last, endemic to Sri Lanka and South India, being the best. “It’s our equivalent of oak, so we are growing them outside our distillery to preserve them.”
Rockland today is working with the last of the vat-makers who are based in Malwana. These coopers make gigantic vats and are inheritors of traditional expertise.
Unfortunately, says Derek, there is now much corruption in the industry, but the company continues to abide by its principles, being one of the largest tax-payers in Sri Lanka, paying much more than most conglomerates.
“We also consider ourselves guardians of this economic responsibility,” says Amal. Just as they have been the guardians of a humble island favourite, bringing it up to an elegant, gourmet level, served on the best tables.
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