Some sweets arrive with a season. Others arrive with memory, folded into festivals, family rituals, and mishti (traditional Bengali sweets) shopfronts you return to year after year. In 2025, five such Indian sweets received a Geographical Indication (GI) tag, formally recognising flavours people have trusted long before they were officially documented.

From winter-only sandesh shaped by nolen gur (date palm jaggery) to a humble jaggery powder rooted in Tamil Nadu’s farming traditions, these GI-tagged sweets tell stories of place, patience, and people. 

Four of them come from West Bengal alone, reflecting the state’s enduring relationship with chhena (fresh acid-set cheese), jaggery, and festive confectionery passed down across generations.

Nolen gur-er sandesh is made with fresh chhena, a soft acid-set cheese, which is then gently cooked with liquid date palm jaggery known as nolen........

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