Hi. My name is Phil Gomes. By day, I work at a public relations firm as its senior 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
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?
Keeping with the idea of exploring cachaça's potential in the colder months, here's something I found on The Webtender:
It's hard not to view Leblon's micro-site dedicated to the "Five-Second Caipirinha" in light of Brazil's federal caipirinha guidelines. Nevertheless, I'm sure these recipes are tasty.
Update 2008-11-04: I just made one. Not bad. Not bad at all.
"Chef Mark" Tafoya comes through again with another cachaça cocktail recipe, this time featuring Leblon and the quite misunderstood absinthe, masterfully mixed by Junior "The Liquid Chef" Merino.
Longtime readers might remember the Sagatiba video feature Mark did in July.
You'll also want to check out another cachaça/absinthe recipe, Summer in São Paulo.
"Phil... Congratulations! Your blog is very important for expanding the knowledge of good handcrafted cachaça." - Kede, father-in-law, cachaça enthusiast
The main inspiration for Cachaçagora was the passion for this spirit that is shared by my in-laws, Claudia and Kede, who live in Rio de Janeiro. Claudia — you occasionally see her referred to as "Mamãe" here — is the president of the Confraria de Cachaça do Copo Furado, a group that regularly meets to talk about cachaça. (The name, translated, is "The Cachaça Brotherhood Of The Pierced Glass.")
Anyway, Kede (pictured in the chef get-up) gave us some expert, in-country context for our blind tasting. Read the translation after the jump.
On Thursday, September 4, my wife and I held Cachaçagora's first blind tasting here at the Gomecile.
Here were the contenders:
All of these are aged in oak barrels, anywhere between six months and five years. Two — Leblon and Cuca Fresca — are available in the United States. The other two were retrieved during visits to Brazil and, near as I can tell, are either not widely available in the U.S. or not available at all.
Our judges, clockwise from upper-left, were Frederico Setti, Eric Tatro, Leandro Ribeiro, and Bleu Caldwell.
Each cachaça was poured prior to the guests arriving. Our tasters were encouraged to look for smoothness and depth-of-flavor, rating each cachaça on that basis according to whether it was their first, second, third, or fourth choice. I then averaged the scores (like golf, achieving a lower number is best) and unveiled the rankings at the end.
As Fred was sure to mention, no cachaça was clearly "bad". He, in particular, struggled to find a number-one choice. That said, all tastings demand a ranking of some type.
Find the results after the jump.
Continue reading "Cachaçagora Holds Its First Blind Tasting" »
For those of you who (for whatever bizarre reason) follow my Retail Watch updates, one thing is clear — it's tough to get away from Leblon if you're looking for cachaça at the liquor store.
This is one of those incredibly rare instances where such ubiquity is a good thing.
I first tried Leblon about a year ago. My then-fiancee-now-wife had introduced me to cachaça the year before. Forbes had just run an article on Leblon founder Steven Luttmann and even took a stab at a blind tasting. I picked up a bottle at the Jack London Square BevMo and brought it on the annual father/son fishing trip that summer.
Unfortunately, I was without limes, as was the local general store. The store did have lime juice, though — the kind in the tacky-looking, lime-shaped-and-colored squeezy bottle. With that and some sugar, I invented the gringorinha. Stirred, not shaken, with whatever implement happened to be at least visibly clean in our utilitarian kitchen.
Please. Don't ask.
I was hoping the bottle of Leblon would last all four nights. It was gone in three. I had help, though... That is, repeated and, I'm quite certain, when-Phil-wasn't-looking help.
The fact is, I rarely felt the need to employ my MacGyverized gringorinha technique. Leblon, perhaps owing to its aging in XO Cognac casks, is also excellent when consumed straight. A dose at lunch and maybe a couple at dinner were perfect.
Of course, Kennedy Meadows is hardly the semi-controlled environment that is the Gomecile's Tasting Lab. The digitally vigilant folks at Leblon happened to find my humble blog — they were one of the very first to do so, actually — and sent over a bottle for review.
You can't help but appreciate the extreme drinkability of this product. The care in the distillation and aging processes really comes through in the featherlight smoothness and the cane-rich aroma. You'll want to hold it in your mouth for a while to fully appreciate all of the richness — light fruity notes with just the right bit of "earthiness" that some cachaça makers seeking northern-hemisphere markets try their best to soft-pedal.
With this summer's farm/distillery purchase of what is now called Maison Leblon in Minas Gerais, one can only assume that Leblon will have greater control over its product. (At the time of the Forbes feature, Leblon cachaça was a kind of "hacker" spirit, fermented and distilled in Brazil before getting shipped off to France for aging.)
My hope is that, at some point, Leblon will create and offer other cachaça varieties under its label, as many of its competitors currently do.
Four strong barrels for this one. As an introduction to cachaça, especially given the scant and often disappointing selection in our liquor stores, Americans can do a hell of a lot worse. (I mean, I read about the cachaças some of you drink on Twitter. Jeez...)
Photo credits (from top):
From here on out, I think I'm going to only do a "Retail Watch" post if the store offers something other than, or in addition to, Ypióca and Leblon.
Keep in mind, I'm open to contributors. (Just so this category doesn't end up being all-Chicago-all-the-time.)
If memory serves, this high-end food store -- similar to Andronico's or Draeger's for you west-coast types -- carried more cachaça labels earlier this year.
more cat pictures
No one really wants 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-to videos, 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.
Drinkhacker gives Leblon a "B+" rating:
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.
Over at My Life On The Rocks, Lance Mayhew is working on his own Leblon review.
You know... This PR thing apparently works. Maybe I ought to think of it as a career.
*chuckles*
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