Cachaça Tour (Pt. 2 of 6): Engenho d'Ouro

September 10, 2009

Cachaça Tour (Pt. 2 of 6): Engenho d'Ouro

Right after Coqueiro, we trekked over to Engenho d'Ouro, getting there right at dusk.

"Engenho d'Ouro" loosely means "Golden Mill". As far as I'm concerned, they might as well have been spinning gold at this place. Pure distillation alchemy going on there.

This was my first experience with tasting the fermented cane juice. For those who haven't tried this, it has a lot of characteristics of vinho verde — light, crisp, and mildly effervescent. Then again, I'm willing to bet relatively few of my readers have tried vinho verde. Your loss. Twice. In one paragraph. (A new record for this site.)

In my explorations, one characteristic of some of my favorite cachaças has been the use of jequitibá rosa barrels during the aging process. Of course, that was the first offering from Engenho d'Ouro that I tried during my visit — and purchased. It is 90-proof worth of amazingness. I've hidden it in my special stash. Pressure sensors all around it. And dobermans.

They say if you love your work, it never feels like work. Engenho d'Ouro's Nourival Carneiro clearly enjoys what he does, as you can tell at the end of this video feature. (He also has a voice that could sell Corinthian leather, I swear.)

That wrapped up day one. Enjoy the video and the slideshow.

Video

Photos

Posted by Phil Gomes on September 10, 2009 at 07:40 PM in Cachaca Tour 2009, Engenho d'Ouro, Making-of, Travel, Videos | Permalink

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About Cachaçagora

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

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Cachaçagora - Cachaça, Caipirinha, And Cocktails

Quite possibly the best English-language blog about cachaça, the national distilled spirit of Brazil.

September 10, 2009