up to 15 years to mature and mellow the raw spirit before blending. Premium brands include Ceylon Arrack, VSOA, VX, Vat9, Old Reserve and Extra Special. Premium clear is generally not aged, but often distilled and/or filtered multiple times to soften its taste. Premium clear brands include Double Distilled and Blue Label. Common is blended with other alcohols produced from molasses or mixed with neutral spirits as filler. Producers Sri Lanka's largest manufacturers, listed in order based on their 2007 annual production of arrack, are: DCSL (Distilleries Company of Sri Lanka), 37.25 million litres IDL (International Distilleries Ltd), 3.97 million litres Rockland Distilleries (Pvt) Ltd, 2.18 million litres Mendis (W. M. Mendis and Co), 0.86 million litres Ceylon Arrack, a brand of Sri Lankan coconut arrack, was recently launched in the UK in 2010. It is also available in France and Germany. White Lion VSOA entered the American market soon after. St Helena Historically Arrack has been a common beverage on the island of St Helena, distilled from potatoes. This is likely due to influences of the East India Company, which controlled St Helena and used it as a halfway point between India and England. Sweden and Finland In Sweden and Finland, batavia-arrack has historically been mixed with other ingredients in order to make Swedish punsch (now available in prepackaged bottles). The alcohol content is normally not over 25%, although it has a high sugar content of nearly 30%. The original recipe was a mixture of arrack with water, sugar, lemon, and tea and/or spices (chiefly nutmeg). Today punsch is drunk warm as an accompaniment to yellow split pea soup, or chilled as an after dinner drink accompanied with coffee (especially during dinner parties at student nations). It is used as a flavouring in several types pastries and sweets as well. The name arrak is still retained for some pastries, for example arraksboll, whereas punsch is used for things like punschrulle. In Finland, arrack (or rum) usually serves as one of the ingredients in the making one of the Finnish traditional pastries, Runeberg tortes. Etymology The word derived from the Arabic word arak (عرق, ʿaraq), meaning 'distillate'. In the Eastern Mediterranean, the term arak is usually used for liquor distilled from grapes and flavored with anise. Unlike arak, the word arrack has been considered by some experts to be derived from areca nut, a palm seed originating in India from