Rohi, Apong, Xaj: The Rice Wines of Assam and the Drink That Named Irroi

Ask for a rice wine in Assam and you will need to specify who you are asking. The Ahom will offer you xaj pani. A Mishing host will pour apong or, for a guest of particular esteem, a first measure of rohi. The Dimasa will set out judima. The Karbi will bring hor. The Bodo will offer jou. The Deuri will pour sujen. In the Brahmaputra valley and the hills surrounding it, more than twenty-four communities maintain distinct traditions of rice fermentation — each with its own starter culture, its own ritual protocols, and its own vocabulary of when and to whom you pour.

This is not a single beverage with local variations. It is a landscape of fermentation cultures, each one encoding centuries of ecological knowledge, communal practice, and social meaning. To understand the word IRROI — and why the lodge in Kaziranga took it as a name — you need to understand the culture of rice wine that gave birth to it.

A Lexicon of the Brew

Xaj Pani — The Ahom Ritual Wine

Of all the rice wines of Assam, xaj pani carries the heaviest ritual freight. The Ahom people — who ruled Assam for nearly six hundred years — use xaj in every significant ceremony: in Xajor Hokaam, the ancestral offerings made to departed forefathers; at births and naming ceremonies; at marriages; at death rites. The server must pray before pouring. The recipient must wait for the ritual words before they touch the leaf cover. The protocol governing a cup of xaj can take longer than the drinking of it.

The brew is made using xaj-pitha — a fermentation starter prepared from medicinal herbs and rice flour, hosting a microbial community that includes Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Lactobacillus plantarum, and several mould species (Rhizopus and Mucor) that produce the amylases needed to convert rice starch to fermentable sugar. Each household's pitha is its own; the microbial composition differs by place, by season, by the hands that made it.

Apong — The Mishing Spectrum

Among the Mishing people, the term apong encompasses a range of rice fermentations, not a single product. There are at least two principal categories:

• Nogin Apong: The everyday rice beer, fermented from cooked rice and E'pob (the Mishing fermentation starter), ready within five to fifteen days. It is made regularly, consumed at home, and offered to guests as a gesture of ordinary hospitality.
• Po:ro Apong (also called Saimod): A ritual preparation of considerably greater complexity. It is made from cooked glutinous rice mixed with the ash of partially burned paddy husk and rice straw — a step that adds potassium and adjusts pH in ways that affect the fermentation's final character. Po:ro apong is produced only for festivals, marriages, and religious ceremonies. It takes longer and requires more skill. You do not make it for a Tuesday.

The fermentation starter — E'pob, also rendered as apop pitha — is made from rice flour blended with up to twenty-six medicinal plants, including Adhatoda vasica and Piper longum. The specific composition is a household secret, passed from mother to daughter, never written down. Research published in the Walsh Medical Media journal has documented the E'pob of different households and found that no two are exactly the same.

Rohi — The First Extraction

Rohi is not a separate brew from apong. It is the first measure drawn from the fermentation — the concentrated, sweeter, more potent liquid that rises to the surface or emerges first when the vessel is unsealed. It is the first press, in winemaking language. It is offered to honoured guests, to elders, to the occasion that deserves the best of what the fermentation has produced.

At Po:Rag — the Mishing new year, celebrated every two to three years after a successful winter or summer harvest — several different fermentations are present at the communal table: rohi, nogin apong, po:ro apong, sanj, horlong. Each marks a different register of celebration. Rohi is among the most honoured. It is the drink held up when the greeting is called:

IRROI.

Lao Pani — The Common Tongue

Outside the specific community traditions, Assamese people use the term lao pani as a generic name for fermented rice beverages. Lao refers to the herbal yeast used in fermentation; pani simply means water or liquid. It is a colloquial catch-all — the way an English speaker might say "homebrew" without specifying the grain, the process, or the tradition. In practice, what is being called lao pani might be xaj, might be apong, might be something else entirely. The word acknowledges the landscape of fermentation without distinguishing within it.

Judima — The First to Be Formally Recognised

In September 2021, the Dimasa community's rice wine — judima — became the first traditional brew in Northeast India to receive a Geographical Indication (GI) tag, granted under the Geographical Indication of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act by the GI Registry in Chennai. The application had been filed two years earlier by the Youth Association for Development and Empowerment (YADEM), a Dimasa community organisation.

The name combines ju (beer, in Dimasa) and Dima (the name of the people). It is brewed from glutinous Bora rice — a heritage variety indigenous to the region — and the bark of Thembra (Acacia pennata), collected from surrounding forests. The GI tag recognition acknowledges what the Dimasa have always known: this is a specific product of a specific people, from a specific place. It cannot be replicated elsewhere and remain the same thing.

The Bodo community followed. In 2024, three varieties of Bodo jou received GI tags: Jou Gwran (the strongest, at approximately 16% alcohol), Maibra Jou Bidwi (the traditional welcome drink), and Bodo Jou Gishi. The Bodo people consider rice beer to be of divine origin — a gift from Lord Shiva — which gives the formal recognition a particular cultural resonance.

Among the Karbi — the community whose cultural evenings at Irroi Kaziranga draw on living traditions — the rice beer is called hor, and the distilled form hor arak. The starter culture is thap, made from the leaves of Croton joufra and uncooked rice. Like most Assamese fermentation starters, it encodes knowledge of the forest — which plants are gathered, when, and how they are prepared is the brewer's art.

Women as Custodians of the Ferment

In nearly every community in the Brahmaputra valley, the making of rice wine is the exclusive domain of women. This is not custom in the sense of convention — it is structural. The knowledge of which plants go into the starter cake, in which proportions, gathered at which stage of growth, stored in which conditions: this is passed from mother to daughter across generations, and it is not written down anywhere.

The Scroll's reporting on Assamese brewing traditions has described this as one of the most significant forms of traditional ecological knowledge held by women in Northeast India: a pharmacological and microbiological knowledge base embedded in cultural practice, transmitted entirely through female lineage, surviving precisely because it was never formalised. When a woman in a Mishing household makes E'pob, she is exercising a competence that combines botany, fermentation science, and ancestral memory. She has no formal credential for any of it. She has something more durable.

The same principle — knowledge rooted in place, transmitted by people — shapes how Irroi Kaziranga approaches food and culture. The Baari kitchen garden is managed by a team that grew up farming in the valley. The rice wine served at the bar is made by a Mishing household 14km from the lodge. The knowledge that makes these things possible did not come from a training programme. It came from living here.

Po:Rag and the Logic of the Harvest Greeting

Po:Rag is not a fixed date on a calendar. It is held every two to three years, after a successful winter or summer harvest — a socio-religious festival that functions as a communal accounting of the year's abundance. The timing reflects a practical truth: not every harvest warrants a Po:Rag. The festival is called when the community has something genuine to celebrate.

The five-day festival involves the entire Mishing community in traditional dress. Songs are sung about agriculture; dances imitate the postures of planting and harvesting. The ritual purpose is to appease the Almighty, to honour the earth, and to offer gratitude to the forefathers. The communal feast is anchored by po:ro apong — the laboriously prepared festival-grade rice wine — and by the shared calling of the harvest greeting:

IRROI. A word that presupposes community, as we have written elsewhere. You do not say it to yourself. You say it to the people around you, holding the cup that took three days to brew, in the year that the harvest came through.

When the founders of Irroi Kaziranga chose this word as the name of the lodge, they were choosing to bind their project to that act of communal welcome. The philosophy of the brand — By the People. Of the Forest. For the Land — is an attempt to make that spirit concrete in every operational decision: who is hired, where the food comes from, whose knowledge shapes the experience.

Rohi at the Bar

The bar at Irroi Kaziranga serves rohi brewed by a Mishing household in the villages near the lodge. It appears on the drinks menu as a standalone offering — the first extraction, served simply — and as a component in seasonal cocktails developed in conversation with the kitchen team. The Assamese tea-infused preparations alongside it use tea from estates within the same 30km radius.

Drinking rohi at the lodge is not a cultural performance or a heritage tourism gesture. It is a continuity. The household that supplies the lodge has the same connection to this valley that the Mishing communities of Majuli have to the Brahmaputra — a relationship with the land that predates the lodge by centuries and will outlast it by centuries more. Irroi's role is not to curate that relationship for guests. It is to make space for it to be encountered honestly.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between rohi and apong?

Both are Mishing rice fermentations. Apong is the broader category — it includes Nogin Apong (everyday brew) and Po:ro Apong (the richer festival preparation). Rohi is the first concentrated extraction of the ferment: sweeter, stronger, reserved for honoured guests and ceremonial occasions. It is the first press.

What is Xaj Pani?

Xaj Pani is the traditional rice wine of the Ahom people of Assam — one of the most ritually significant brews in the region. It is used in Xajor Hokaam (ancestral offerings), at births, marriages, and funerals. The Ahom regard it as inseparable from their relationship with their forefathers and the spiritual world. Its starter, xaj-pitha, is made from medicinal herbs and rice flour.

What is Judima, and why is it significant?

Judima is the traditional rice wine of the Dimasa community of Assam. In September 2021, it became the first traditional rice wine in Northeast India to receive a Geographical Indication (GI) tag — formally recognising it as a product of a specific people, from a specific place. It is brewed from heritage Bora rice and the bark of Thembra (Acacia pennata).

Who brews rice wine in Assam?

In nearly every community in the Brahmaputra valley, rice wine is brewed exclusively by women. The knowledge of starter cultures — which plants, in which proportions, gathered when — is transmitted from mother to daughter and never written down. It is one of the most significant forms of traditional ecological knowledge held by women in Northeast India.

What does IRROI mean, and why is it the lodge's name?

IRROI is the celebratory greeting called at Po:Rag — the Mishing new year — to welcome a new harvest. It presupposes community: you say it to the people around you, holding a cup that took three days to brew. The founders of Irroi Kaziranga chose this word because it captures the spirit of communal welcome, land-rootedness, and shared abundance that the lodge is built to embody.