Mercopress catches up with last year's changes to cachaça's legal status, but manages to provide some interesting nuggets nevertheless.
Like this:
Top cachaça producers and the government plan to pool their resources to fund slick advertising marketing campaigns, particularly ahead of the World Cup, on the model of Colombia's successful coffee promotion drive, he added.
Question: When was the last time you drank something (fun) because a government pitched it to you?
Last year, cachaça sales to the United States totaled an insignificant US$2 million, roughly 10% of total worldwide exports, [the Brazilian Cachaça Institute] Ibrac said.
Sounds terrible, doesn't it? Copa's Jason Montgomery walked me through the math. "Light, but in the ballpark," he said, figuring 75,000 cases times 12 bottles times, say, $2.50/bottle gets you to just north of that US$2 million. Then, you figure that even rotgut becomes a $20+ bottle by the time it gets to the U.S.
But, wait... Surely a major brand is going to come to the rescue and be that rising tide that lifts all cachaça boats in the U.S., right?
Right?
Cachaça 51, which has a 30% market share in Brazil, "is present on all five continents and represents nearly 20% of total Brazilian cachaca export revenues."
Um... Cachaça 51 is engine-cleaner.
As you've heard me say, there are many things that are going to smother a vigorous market for cachaça in the U.S. Two big ones:
- American tastemakers have no idea how to approach cachaca. More on this in future posts.
- Most of what people are going to get as their first cachaça experience will give them the most wicked hangover the following day.
What do you think of Ipioca?
Posted by: Margaret Calazans | August 04, 2013 at 05:55 PM