cane crushin' musts

Tonight's blog is brought to you by the pure power of cachaça!

That's right. I've fallen irreversibly in love with cachaça, in much the same way as I did many years ago with whisky and now I fear I may have to spread my whisky love a little thinner.

Well actually, a great deal thinner, given that there are as many as 5000 makes of cachaça available in Brazil. Thankfully though, many of these can be swiftly evicted from our consideration, as we shall see, for they are mere pretenders who take the cachaça name in vain.

I've witnessed an important distinction in all the literature I've so far read. That is the aguardente <-> cachaça distinction and we shall soon see that, by definition, cachaça ploughs a rather narrower furrow of meaning.

Current Brazilian legislation defines sugar cane aguardente as drink obtained from the simple distillation of sugar cane or the distillation of the fermented must of sugar cane with an alcohol per volume of between 38% and 54% at 20ºC.

Cachaça, on the other hand, is defined as a spirit fabricated in a manner typical to and, in fact, exclusive to Brazil, from fermented must, with a more rigorously controlled alcohol content of 38% to 48% at 20ºC.

A further difference is evident in the mode of production. Cachaça is created in copper stills, the cane is harvested by hand and the fermentation process may last from 15 to 30 hours. Aguardente production is industrial, occurs in steel drums, the harvest is mechanical and the chemically-induced fermentation takes a mere 6 hours.

All cachaça is aguardente, but not all aguardente can truthfully call itself cachaça.

Now let us quickly dispose of all talk of distinction and definition, and get down to the far more worthy business of description and delectation.

After all that, I'm starting with an industrially produced aguardente. But why? Because there is nothing elitist or pompous about this space. We will observe and take pleasure in the fact that the cost of a bottle does not necessarily reflect the quality of the product. Some expensive cachaça is shit and some cheap stuff is fantastic, and vice versa.

The focus of this and any future blogs on the subject, will be on pure cachaça and not on caipirinhas but in order to focus we must disavow ourselves of our colourful coctail cousin, the one who threatens to overshadow our divine drink, before we can immerse ourselves properly in this pure spirit world.

When I make caipirinhas, this is the guy I reach for. He's a true work horse. He goes for around £1.50 in the supermarket, making him aggressively cost beneficial and he works well with just about any fruit. His name is Velho Barreiro. Here is the label in English no less. This guy travels. You note that it is not called a cachaça but that it is double distilled and sweetened. I confess I've never noticed a sweet taste from Velho Barreiro, such that on occasion I've drunk it as it comes with a spoonful of honey stirred in. Basically, you don't drink this stuff straight unless you are an alcoholic. I've seen working class Brazilian men knocking back glasses of this stuff pure at the top of the morning when I'm on my way to my first class of the day. Hard. Core.

I'm translating all the names of the aguardente up for appreciation here, but very early on in the game I've managed to reach something of an impasse. Velho quite simply means old, of that there can be no doubt. My first instinct was to say that barreiro came from the word barril meaning barrel or cask in Portuguese and that barreiro would be a barrel maker or cooper, as we say. However, there is another word for that in Portuguese so I visited the dictionary. It seems the word eminates from barra meaning clay and so here, the translation would be something like Old Clay Pit. Not so glamourous. Still, there's something about the old man in his hat and bountiful beard staring into the distance from inside the barrel that entrances me. Perhaps I'm wrong to do so, but I trust him.


Vale Verde (trans. Green Valley)

Vale Verde is a prize winner. Playboy magazine elected it (not erected as is typically Playboy's purpose) the best cachaça in Brazil and not without good reason. Incidentally, I only know this because there's a small label saying so on the neck of the bottle. Aged in oak casks for 3 years with an alcohol content of 40% it comes from Betim in the state of Minas Gerais, and not the notorious Salinas region in the north of the state. Salinas is the Brazilian equivalent of Islay. We shall be hearing and tasting more from Salinas later.

Vale Verde is a fine cachaça. It's smooth and easy on the palate which well may be the result of a unique charcoal filtering process which I read about on their site. This is one for all the family, a little light for my tastes, like a decent Speyside perhaps.

Engenho D'Ouro - Azuladinha (trans. Mill of Gold - Little Blue One)

This is a special little bottle that we've had for a couple of years and now that I've opened it and sampled it I can say that it won't be around for too much longer.
This cachaça is produced near Paraty in the state of Rio, and we visited the site of production, known in Portuguese as an alambique (alambic still in English) and inevitably ended up parting with cash at the end of our brief tour. Here you can see a pic of the copper still and the little mill that crushes the cane. This place is on a far smaller scale than the previous cachaça we looked at and it is certain that every stage is carried out by hand. I had a go myself at feeding some stands of cane into the ancient crushing mill and felt all a quiver as I did so.

Let us turn our attention once more to the spirit. The first thing we see here is that the spirit is clear. Now sadly I can't be certain, but some research has led to the discovery that part of the production at Engenho D'Ouro is aged for a year in oak or jequitibá casks. However in the case of the Azuladinha, I believe that it hasn't been aged at all. What is different here is that, in order to soften the taste, extract from leaves of tangerine has been added (and the leaves removed) imparting a faint blue tinge to the colour. This cachaça is deliciously aromatic, retaining the flavour of the sugar cane, undisguised by wood and yet complex with a long lasting sweet aftertaste.

My research also led me to a number of online stores where I believed I would be forced to make some credit card transactions, however, along the way, I happened upon an emporium in the dark and largely unfamiliar centre of Sao Paulo which boasts a worryingly wide range of cachaça. Esquina da Cachaça (Cachaça Corner) is top of my list of places to go this week.

Aesthetic aside: Some of the label designs for cahcaca are superb and I'd say are worthy of collection purely for that reason. We shall feature some of these in the future.

In the meantime:

Saude!