Hi. My name is Phil Gomes. By day, I work at a public relations firm as its vice president of digital integration. I'm a proud SF East Bay native who currently lives in Chicago.
I was introduced to cachaça by my wife, a Carioca. Her mom, in turn, is the president of the Confraria de Cachaça do Copo Furado, a group that meets monthly to talk about Brazil's indigenous spirit. I participated in one of their meetings when I vacationed in Rio in July 2008.
This started me thinking about the basic question of whether cachaça in the U.S. is today where, say, tequila was some decades ago.
So I decided to start this blog as a means to record and share the cachaça-related items I've been seeing day-to-day. I hope to be sharing recipes, impressions, and random thoughts as the U.S. continues to catch on to the potential for this particular spirit.
Oh... The name? "Cachaçagora" is a portmanteau of "Cachaça" and "agora", which is the Portuguese word for "now". In Greek, "agora" also means public square. I hope to meet the expectations of both.
Saúde!
cachacagora~~
at~~
gmail~~
dot~~
com
Rating System
Five barrels: Baptize your kid with this. Immediately.
Four barrels: This should be in your special stash. Hide it from your uncle and the guy who keeps wanting to borrow your truck.
Three barrels: Decent.
Two barrels: Almost guaranteed to turn into a four-barrel-rated cachaça after the third one. Cocktail-mixture is absolutely essential.
One barrel: If Wolverine from the X-Men wanted to go on a serious bender with this stuff, his mutant healing-factor would come in quite handy.
Zero barrels: Your engine block probably needs cleaning, doesn't it?
With no previous experience in the liquor business, both men, 24, have put everything they have on the line to create a start-up company that produces Beija. Whether their gamble will pay off remains to be seen.
Even if you only have a passing interest in the U.S. cachaça market, the article is worth a read simply because you have to admire their persistence and determination.
Also, their tale of pursuing a distributor -- "they all laughed at us" -- seems to be a familiar one. This 2007 Forbes feature (of which I'm not too terribly fond) describes Leblon founder Steven Luttman getting "the brush-off" from fifty distributors in twelve months. Clearly these distributors are only now starting to wise up to the potential.
While pronouncing our favorite drink "CATCH-ah-suh" is about as grating as calling the producers of this segment "Rooters", here's a piece that apparently ran yesterday:
No one reallywants to watch advertising. To remain relevant, brands need to adopt behavior more akin to media companies, delivering their brand message within content that offers educational, entertainment, or journalistic quality.
This is why I'm very much into what Leblon and Sagatiba are doing on YouTube.
Last week, Sagatiba quietly launched its SagatibaUS YouTube channel, which will evidently be the home for its excellent Premium Side Of Brasil mini-documentaries.
(Earlier episodes were previously hosted on an account named "paulosagatiba". Global Brand Ambassador John Gakuru has some of his own videos up as well.)
Rather than hit you over the head with cloying messages about how great its product is, Sagatiba wants to align itself with everything that is good -- "premium", even -- about Brazil. The first videos posted to the SagatibaUS account offer perspectives from a Brasilian fashion designer, a carpenter, and a chef.
Leblon's content is quite a bit more obvious about its commercial interests, though also appears to be doing a bit more to educate folks about cachaça itself.
They have the Naren and Jacob series, helpful how-tovideos, and even a music video that (I'm guessing here) is aimed at getting Americans to pronounce "caipirinha" correctly. (You just have to get past the notion that someone would name their daughter "Caipirinha".)
Heck, they even have a site called, appropriately enough, Cachaça 101, with an entertaining man-on-the-street video of random pedestrians mangling the pronunciation of our favorite distilled spirit.
The point is, both efforts are engaging at different levels. Advertising, in the strictest sense, interrupts -- your favorite TV show, radio program, magazine, city's skyline, etc. Educating bartenders and consumers as to the value of cachaça (and, hopefully, entertaining them along the way) can only be a good thing.
In the last 4 weeks of my travels I have had a lot of Caipirinhas. I have had them at little beach huts in the sizzling sun, I have had them in 5 star hotels overlooking the sheer madness of Sao Paulo, I have had them in all kinds of restaurants and bars and I even had one in a greasy diner on the highway from Rio to Sao Paulo. Every single one of them tasted better and pleased my palate more than pretty much anything I have been served under the name of "Caipirinha" in the whole of Europe.
Muddle 4 fresh raspberries and 2 tablespoons brown sugar in the bottom of a shaker glass.
Add ice as desired, 1 ½ ounces Moleca gold cachaça and the juice of 1 lime.
Shake vigorously, top with 1 ½ ounces full-bodied red wine and serve in desired cocktail glass. Garnish with a raspberry skewer.
I'm reminded of that brief period when I thought the whole Nieman Marcus $250 cookie recipe story was true. Then again, distributing a recipe for a $15 drink that ran in a major metro daily newspaper isn't really the same.
Funny story... "Moleca" is the Portuguese word for "tomboy". Unfortunately, I read it as "meleca", which is the Portuguese word for "booger". My wife set me straight.
If you’re looking for textbook cachaça, Leblon is as close as I’ve come
to finding something that exhibits the highlights and the curiosities
about this intriguing sugar cane spirit.
Like author Christopher Null, I too have received Leblon's review kit. I look forward to writing the review later this week.
I swore to myself when Cabana Cachaça's racy ads and Web site started to make waves -- "straight-up porn" according to Time Out Chicago -- I'd just ignore it. It's pretty clear that their marketing is going for the linkbait factor and I'm not inclined to indulge it too much.
But, when you're a blog that's all-cachaça-all-the-time, there's an expectation that you'd have something to say about such a widelycovered campaign.
First, let me just say that America's Puritan roots are showing a little too much these days. One might think that, decades after pure-as-the-driven-snow Julie "Mary Poppins" Andrews insisted on showing the moviegoing public her breasts, and days after the FCC gave CBS a pass for Nipplegate, that we'd be past all this.
Nope. Not a chance. Alas, there remains this irrational fear. A uniquely American fear of the female nipple that's getting bigger.
(Err... The fear, I mean.)
On the other hand, I personally tend to find the whole "sex sells" ethic cynical, especially when you're selling a product (alcohol) that, when tied too closely to sex, often results in rather unfortunate consequences in the real world.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not a prude and you're not going to find me hanging out in front of Cabana's importer naked wearing a sandwich board chanting "Spirits Not Skin!", "Cachaça Not Crotch!", or "Tipples Not Nipples!"
However, I'm inclined to pay more attention to a cachaça brand that has more to say about the craft and the product.
Okay... Not quite a cocktail, but damn this sounds good. Tempted to mix up a batch of this before summer ends here in Chicago.
The "ABC" stands for "Alsace, Brazil, Chile". The Brazilian connection is obvious. As for "Alsace" and "Chile"? Well, they recommend using Cono Sur Gewurztraminer, from Chile.
Here's the recipe:
Start by finding a generous pitcher to mix everything in, with a
lid. Take a potato peeler and cut off four or five good-size strips of
orange peel without too much pith, the same amount of lemon peel and
unblemished English cucumber peel, and put them all in the pitcher.
Add a tablespoon, more or less, of sugar and a good glug of Cachaça
61* -- this is the Brazilian connection, the famous sugar cane spirit -- and
a big sprig of fresh mint. Muddle it all up with a long-handled spoon
(I use a spurtle, being a closet Scot) and let it sit on the counter
for half an hour or so, to infuse.
Now pour in a bottle of the Cono Sur Gewurztraminer*, a whole trayful
of ice cubes, and a small can or bottle of soda or sparkling mineral
water. Stir it all up and put the pitcher in the fridge or even the
freezer for 20 minutes to get it really, really cold. Then pour away.
* I'm going to assume that any inexpensive white cachaça that isn't complete stove-cleaner will do. Same with the Gewurztraminer.
Muddle
the lime, strawberries, basil and sugar in a shaker. Fill the shaker
with ice and add Leblon Cachaça. Shake vigorously. Serve in a rocks
glass. Garnish with a strawberry and a basil leaf.
...Velha is handcrafted from fresh pressed cane, distilled in copper pot stills, and aged in oak barrels for at least two years.
Can't wait to try it. While I did enjoy their Pura white cachaça, I did feel that a lot of the character was distilled out of it.
The post also has a couple of Sagatiba-supplied cocktail recipes.
UPDATE 2008-08-08 12:25 CDT: It would appear that Cocktail Times went a little hair-trigger on their "Submit" button. I'm told now that we won't be seeing Velha until October.
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