Business | Spirit of the law

Pakistan’s Murree Brewery shrugs off restrictions on its products

Officials are increasingly relaxed about consumption of its beer, if not its whisky

Tipple from a teetotalitarian land
|RAWALPINDI

QUARTER-LITRE bottles of whisky whizz down a conveyor belt past Mukhtar Ali, a quality-control employee at Pakistan’s Murree Brewery, the only legal beer-and-spirit maker in this Islamic country. Nearby labourers pack Vat No.1, a cask-aged spirit, into boxes. An elderly man with a long beard tapes them up. Asked over the roar of imported German machinery if they have ever taken a sip of the amber liquid, each shakes his head. “It’s haram,” (meaning forbidden), says Mr Ali.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Spirit of the law”

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