There's a moment when a bottle of whisky stops being just a bottle. It becomes something you want to keep on the shelf long after the last pour. Indri's Diwali Collector's Edition 2025 is exactly that kind of bottle — and now the rest of the world officially agrees.
The Indian single malt brand made history at the World Whiskies Awards 2026, taking home "Best Special Edition Design" in the World's Best Design category. It's the first time an Indian whisky brand has ever claimed that title, a win that signals something much bigger than a single award.
A Design Built Around India's Royal Past
The bottle was conceived by Krsnaa Mehta, designer and founder of India Circus, a brand known for weaving traditional Indian motifs into contemporary design. For the 2025 Diwali edition, Mehta pulled from the imagery of India's royal-era gardens — peacocks in flight, majestic elephants making their way through lush grounds, grand arches that carry the weight of centuries of architectural craft.
The result isn't just decorative. It tells a story. Every element of the packaging was chosen to conjure something specific: a sense of quiet grandeur, the kind you feel standing in a space that has existed for hundreds of years and knows it.
"I truly enjoyed crafting this packaging; it was a beautifully immersive process," Mehta said. "The walking royal elephants and the royal courtyard bring in the Indianness I set out to capture, adding a sense of heritage and quiet grandeur to the design. I am utterly delighted to see it receive the recognition it so richly deserves."
The color palette leans into richness without becoming garish. Heritage-inspired textures run through the design, and the artwork operates like a narrative — one that unfolds the longer you look at it. For collectors, that kind of depth matters. A bottle you can study is a bottle worth keeping.
Diwali, Turned Into a Collectible
Indri has been releasing Diwali Collector's Editions for several years now, and each one has built on the last. The series has become one of the most watched annual whisky releases in India, the kind of thing enthusiasts mark their calendars for well ahead of the festive season.
The 2025 edition raises the bar. Where earlier releases celebrated Indian tradition, this one does so with a level of design sophistication that holds up against anything produced anywhere in the world. That's not an overstatement — the World Whiskies Awards just confirmed it.
Shalini Sharma, Head of Marketing at Piccadily Agro Industries Limited, the company behind Indri, put the win in perspective. "With every Diwali edition, we set out to create something that celebrates India in its truest form," she said. "The 2025 design is a tribute to our heritage — our art, our symbols, our stories. To see it being recognized as the best in the world is incredibly special. It reinforces that Indian design, rooted in culture yet expressed with modernity, can stand tall on any global platform."
That last point is the one worth sitting with. Indian whisky has spent years fighting for shelf space in markets that defaulted to Scotch, Irish, or Japanese bottles. A design award at this level doesn't just recognize a bottle — it signals that India's whisky industry has arrived in every sense.
The Whisky Inside the Box
The packaging may have won the award, but what's inside has its own story. Indri Single Malt launched in 2022 and has moved faster than almost anyone expected. The brand has collected more than 40 accolades since launch, including recognition as the best Indian single malt and, notably, best whisky in the world from at least one major competition.
It's produced in Indri, a small village in Haryana in northern India. The grain used is premium six-row Indian barley sourced from Rajasthan, a choice that gives the whisky a distinctly Indian character rather than simply imitating the European single malt template. That decision — to lean into what India actually produces rather than copy what Scotland has perfected — is central to everything Piccadily is doing with this brand.
The Diwali Collector's Edition 2025 is available in the United States with a suggested retail price between $250 and $300. At that price, it sits comfortably in the category of bottles that serve two purposes: whisky to drink and whisky to own.
What the Win Actually Means
The World Whiskies Awards is one of the most respected competitions in the industry. Winning in any category is meaningful. Winning in a design category as a first-ever Indian brand to do so carries a different kind of weight — it's a door opening.
For American whisky drinkers who have been watching the Indian single malt category grow, Indri's trajectory is worth paying attention to. In just a few years, this brand has gone from a newcomer to an internationally decorated name, building its reputation on both what's in the bottle and how that bottle is presented to the world.
The 2025 Diwali Collector's Edition is a strong case for why design deserves to be taken seriously as part of what makes a whisky worth buying. When the storytelling is this deliberate — elephants in royal courtyards, the glow of Diwali rendered in texture and color — the bottle itself becomes part of the experience before a single drop is poured.
For a brand barely three years old, that kind of global recognition is remarkable. For the Indian whisky industry as a whole, it's long overdue.
