SPIRITS
Sugar and Spice
Add cachaca to Carnival, soccer and the Bossa Nova on Brazil's lis of best exports.
BY MARK SPIVAK
Cachaça is the national drink of Brazil. Nearly 1.5 billion liters are produced each year, making it the third most popular spirit in the world.
Like some types of rum, cachaça is distilled from sugarcane, and is available in both light and gold versions. Lighter colored cachaça is mass-produced in column stills, bottled without aging, and primarily used in cocktails. The amber variety is made in small pot stills, like Cognac, and aged in various types of wood barrels before release. This type of artisan cachaça has become enormously popular in the United States over the past few years.
“I wanted to introduced a truly premium cachaça to this country, one that reflected the Brazilian heritage in the right way,” says Matti Anttila, founder and owner of Cabana Cachaça. Anttila worked in Brazil after college and discovered the spirit. When he returned to this country and couldn’t find it, he decided to create his own.
“I found a distillery that was small, innovative and had great quality control. We spent some time refining the formula, and launched the brand in June of 2006.”
A single-estate cachaça, Cabana is double-distilled and aged for nine months in native Brazilian barrels. The result is a spirit that is rounder and smoother on the palate than most, with a refined taste profile and light citrus notes. It is typical of the small-batch cachaça that Americans have begun to find so intriguing.
Connoisseurs seek out brands such as Rochinha, which has been made on the same small farm since 1902; aged in oak casks, it is available in five- or 12-year-old versions. GRM, which is matured in three different varieties of wood and is said to resemble a premium tequila añejo, also has quite a cult following. Since 1840, the local arririba wood of southern Brazil has provided the solera system that makes Armazem Vieira both unique and exceptional; its rare 16-year-old cachaça can easily fetch $125, if you can find it. Beleza Pura was created by Olie Berlic, a former sommelier at Manhattan’s Gotham Bar and Grill, who tasted more than 800 cachaças before creating his own. He swears that his product is so clean and natural that it’s impossible to get a hangover from drinking it, but this claim hasn’t been scientifically verified.
Premium cachaça has arrived in the States partly as a result of the influence of Leblon, a brand created in Brazil in 2005. Gilles Merlet, a master blender from Cognac, is responsible for making the spirit in small copper pot stills and aging it in XO Cognac casks. Bacardi recently invested in the company, which has helped catapult Leblon into the mainstream.
Read the complete article in the February 2010 issue of Naples Illustrated.
Mark Spivak is the author of spivakonwine.com. He can be reached at NIedit@naplesillustrated.com.
