Cachaçagora - Cachaça, Caipirinha, And Cocktails

Cachaçaria Ypioca Featured In BrazzilMag

BrazzilMag has a great interview with Ypióca's Aline Telles, the curiously teetotalling descendant of the brand's founding family, about their restaurant/cachaçaria in Fortaleza.

Yes, there is some prejudice when it comes to cachaça in Brazil - Ypióca is exported to more than 40 countries around the world, and is a respected brand abroad. However, when it comes to Brazil, people here do not view the brand the same way they do other spirits like whiskey or tequila. Our proposal with this space is to help to break this perception by bringing the product to a shopping mall in order to demonstrate that there a certain level of sophistication to cachaça.

More at BrazzilMag.

Forbes Covers Cabana

Forbes takes another crack at covering cachaça, this time focusing on Cabana and its founder, Matti Anttila. (The magazine's last cachaça-related article featured Leblon in 2007. It was a decent piece left deeply marred by a truly iron-palated tasting of five brands, betraying the reviewer's apparent taste for fine gun oil.)

Where this article excels, though, is the way it takes you through what Matti, in particular, has had to do to make Cabana a success and, in general, what the category needs to do in order to succeed. 

The article rightly points out that, inasmuch as different cachaça companies compete, they also rely on each other to build the category

For all the sniping between cachaça competitors, they are also collaborators. Each brand stands to gain if the liquor gains greater acceptance in the U.S-- where there are now 20 cachaça brands, up from just six when Anttila got started in 2006. According to the Beverage Information Group, cachaça is the fastest growing spirit category in the U.S., but it is starting from a small base. 

Read more over at Forbes.Com.