Hansel’s tryst with feni starts, like all good things, with some family history.
His great-great-grandfather was a timber merchant and builder who was given the first liquor licence in Maharashtra. Left penniless after his death, during Prohibition, his family took to bottling medical spirits. It kept the fires burning in the Vaz household. In 1977, they started Vaz Enterprises, to sell all kinds of spirits. In 1983, the year Hansel was born, his parents started Vaz Liquor Industries, selling a feni named for his grandmother, Dona Maria. On the side, his father was running a provision store (also selling liquor) in Margao; in 1998, they moved fully into the alcohol business.
Despite being involved in the family business, accompanying his father to farms, working at the family store, Hansel didn’t consider working with feni. “I knew I had a calling, as a kid. I just didn’t know what it was.”
It helped that his parents did not push the three siblings; his mother just wanted them to study. “We developed deep roots, and were given wings to fly. We were always allowed our opinion,” he says. The school-going Hansel was easygoing and popular, playing sports, sculpting and painting. “He was a charmer, and very popular with the girls,” says his wife, Wenona Fernandes. “I had a huge crush on him.”
They studied together in Class 12, and before leaving for Bombay to study at St Xavier’s College, he asked her out. They’ve been together ever since.
Spending his childhood outdoors left him with a fascination for nature, which greatly influenced his decision to study ecology, and then shift to geology, in St Xavier’s College, Mumbai. Before graduating, he landed a job with Baker Hughes and moved to New Zealand.
Life was good. Hansel was earning well, learning how to be methodical, and excelling at his job as a mudlogger. “I thought that was my career, and I wouldn’t return to India.”
But in 2009, two pivotal things happened to change his mind: the recession hit, and he learnt that job security wasn’t a given; and second, the protests about the regional plan 2011, which fuelled his angst about contributing to his homeland. “I wanted to do something for Goa,” he says.
The ‘something’ turned out to be feni.
He didn’t want to return and take over the family business, or work for his father, so he settled on a compromise — take over the flagging section of the business and build it up — this was the family’s feni business.
His first step back was to launch a new feni brand, put his name on the bottle, and give it a premium tag. Enter Cazulo Premium Feni. “Feni is Goa, Goa is feni, Feni is Cazulo.”