Cachaçagora - Cachaça, Caipirinha, And Cocktails

Brazil's New Caipirinha Law

Having solved every other problem, Brazil's government passed a resolution on Friday that puts federal guidelines behind its national cocktail, the caipirinha.

From the Associated Press by way of NowPublic:

So how do you make Brazil's national cocktail?

Maybe you'd better call a lawyer.

Brazil's government has published legal guidelines insisting that a caipirinha must be made just so: It's mostly the sugarcane liquor called cachaca. And you can add at least 1 percent crushed lime. But that had better be real sugar in the glass.

The Agriculture Ministry rules published in Friday's official gazette are meant to set "standards of identity and quality" for the drink.

The ministry has failed to say what punishment awaits those responsible for illicit caipirinhas.

This, of course, should not be confused with the real necessity of having laws around the definition of "cachaça".

Update: Adam Lee of Eyes On Brazil got a hold of the actual published rules (in Portuguese).

Cachaça & Diplomacy

Yes, it helps me rationalize the time I put into this site when I can claim that cachaça matters on the world stage.

The Ministry of External Relations of Brazil and the U.S. Department of State held the third session of the Economic Partnership Dialogue on October 29 and 30, 2008, in Brasilia, to further strengthen and expand economic and commercial cooperation between the two countries. This meeting built upon the positive results of the first two sessions, held in Brasilia on December 13, 2007, and in Washington, D.C., on March 5-6, 2008.

The interesting part: Cachaça's stateside recognition as exclusively Brazilian is not in question. The matter at hand: Does bourbon deserve be similarly recognized as exclusively American?

The U.S. side reiterated support for the recognition of cachaça as a distinct Brazilian product in the U.S. market and presented an update on recent developments on the issue. The Brazilian side reported on possible ways of addressing the more recent U.S. request related to Bourbon and Tennessee whiskey.

Two Of My Favorite Things

Open source software and cachaça:

Taken from a Flickr photoset about Linux-Kongress 2008.

Caption reads "Look how Christoph is smiling at the bottle of Cachaça ;-)"

Pedro Urano's "Royal Road Of Cachaça" Wins "Best Documentary" At 10th Rio de Janeiro Film Festival

Variety reports that filmmaker Pedro Urano won the "Best Documentary" award for his film Estrada Real da Cachaça ("The Royal Road of Cachaça").

Here's a six-minute demo reel of the film:

Estrada Real da Cachaca (The Royal Road of Cachaca) from Pedro Urano on Vimeo.

Would love to get a hold of this somehow. I have to imagine that the next step for this would be to submit it to the film festivals in the U.S., especially the wide variety of Latino film festivals we have up here.

Oh... Pssst... Hey Pedro... The 2009 Chicago Latino Film Festival call-for-entries is due December 19, 2008 (PDF).

Cachaça Is Drink Of The Month At "We Are Never Full"

Foodie site We Are Never Full is featuring our favorite spirit this month, and richly so.

I found their treatment of the caipirinha particularly enjoyable:

And, for me, it’s the style of the drink that I find so attractive. The rawness of the cachaça, the sharp tang of lime, the sweetness of the sugar, the muddling it all together - all these different flavors and textures speak to me of a vibrant, diverse culture that retains a sharp bite.

The Story Of Beija Cachaça

WestonForum.Com ran a piece about the young founders of Beija Cachaça:

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.

And, no, I haven't tried Beija yet. 

Reuters Covers Cachaça

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:

Sagatiba Intros "Velha" Cachaça In U.S.

Near as my searches can determine, Cocktail Times appears to have the scoop on Sagatiba's introduction of its Velha cachaça in the U.S.

From their post:

...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.

New York City Finds Justification For $12 Caipirinhas

1,500 bottles of cachaça were lost when the truck carrying them exploded. (Click through to see what 1,500-bottles-of-cachaça-plus-truck-on-fire looks like.)

No fatalities. Just one... ummm... "involuntarily converted" truck, a brief period of substandard air quality, and a lot of inconvenienced motorists.

The driver, who only suffered minor injuries, claims that the truck was not overloaded.

About the headline? Too bad, Big Apple. There was only a sub-one-percent chance that this batch was headed for export anyway.

Culinary Media Network Explores Cachaça

Mark Tafoya of ReMARKable Palate and the Culinary Media Network is featuring cachaça (particularly Sagatiba) in a big way this week.

Check out this excellent 45-minute interview (MP3) with Jared Brown and Anastatia Miller, husband-and-wife directors of the Exposition Universelle des Vins et Spiritueux and authors of the book Cachaça: The Soul Of Brazil. The guests, along with Mark, do an excellent job of dispelling a number of myths about cachaça and even explain how the caipirinha owes some of its origins to the Napoleonic Wars. (Certainly news to your humble editor.)

Enjoy Sagatiba's cocktail tutorial below, also supplied by Mark.

Now... Where can I buy this book?