Cachaçagora - Cachaça, Caipirinha, And Cocktails

Cachaça Tour (Pt. 3 of 6): Cachaça Maria Izabel

I saw a lot of great places during my five-day tour of Rio de Janeiro state's cachaça country, but only one could be fairly described as "magical".

Cachaça Maria Izabel is located in a quiet, tranquil bay. To get there, you must brave a road that perhaps only meets the minimum definition of the word, that is, most rocks and vegetation are cleared away so that one place can be sorta kinda connected to another. Once you arrive at the distillery, however, you're a million miles away from everything else. 

We spent a morning with She-Whose-Name-Is-On-The-Bottle, Maria Izabel Costa, herself. She is the serene cachaça earth-mother who watchfully presides over this blessed hamlet, pursuing her divine craft with a charming modesty.

The tasting highlight was clearly an ultra-special batch that she kept in a large jug. She didn't say much about it save for the fact that, every so often, luck smiles upon this secluded cachaça grotto and all environmental and temporal factors come together perfectly. I imagine this is much like when some musicians describe a mental place they sometimes fall into where they simply cannot play a wrong note. And, like Eddie Van Halen's "brown sound" or Jimi Hendrix's tone on "The Wind Cries Mary", it is not likely to be imitated. 

Of course, I didn't leave without purchasing some goodies. First, some oak-aged 2007 special reserve. Then, some cachaça truffles and candy!

For the rest, check out the video and slideshow. 

Video

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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

Cachaça Tour (Pt. 1 of 6): Coqueiro Cachaça

As many of you know, I was fortunate enough to enjoy a five-day, six-stop tour of artisanal cachaça distilleries around Rio de Janeiro state in August. The result is a multi-part video travelogue that I will eventually post in its entirety. 

This spirit of this work, of course, is the same as the one that governs this blog: I don't presume expertise, but I hope to provide an online platform for the shared exploration of Brazil's national spirit. (I'm also not a pro broadcaster... clearly!)

My first stop was Coqueiro, which I first learned about early in this blog's development. My Flickr-scanning uncovered a bottle of one of their flavored products, signed by Neil Gaiman. 

A random visitor — "Frank (from Holland)" — offered additional context:

Hallo,

I can give you some background information on Coqueiro:

It's a cachaca from Paraty, they call their distillate 'Pinga' (english: drop) there.

Coqueria sells a lot of cachaça's with flavors like pineapple and other fruits. The one in the picture is probably a 'caramelizado' flavored with syrop.

Paraty is traditional town on the green coast 150 km from rio de janeiro city with a great tradition for cachaça, they still have a dozen traditional distilleries (alambiques). Yearly they have their pinga festival.

Coqueiro introduced me to a cachaça variety known as azulada. Essentially, it involves adding tangerine tree leaves to the fermented cane juice during the distillation process. This leaves the cachaça with a light citrus taste and, when the light hits it just right, a heavenly blue hue. 

They sent me out to my next stop with a complimentary bottle in-hand. Let me tell you: making a caipirinha with this stuff is amazing. A ton of other possibilities, though my limited stash prevents me from doing too much experimentation. Little chance of me getting an azulada hook-up in the U.S., unfortunately, so I'm going to have to make my liter last. 

For aging the cachaça, Coqueiro principally uses two woods: the familiar oak and the more unusual amendoim. The latter (literally "peanut" in English, but with no real relationship to the actual legume) imparts minimal color and flavor characteristics to the cachaça. Ipê barrels are also often chosen for this reason. 

Enjoy the video and the slideshow. All slideshows will feature both my photos and my wife's.

Video

Photos

Cachaça & Native Brazilian Woods

The American Society of São Paulo has posted a wonderful exploration of the role of wood choice in the cachaça aging process.

From the post:

The aging process brings another fabulous aspect to this experience. Prime cachaças age in wood barrels made from over 26 different native Brazilian trees, giving them different body and characteristics. As even the most seasoned people around the world are only used to oak barrel-aged spirits, the discovery of these unexpected notes can intrigue even the most experienced connoisseur.

There are oak-aged cachaças that give you that familiar base taste you can get in any given whiskey, but try the ones aged in umburana, jequitibá, ipê, balsam wood, jatobá or guarandi and you’ll see that there is a wealth of tastes and experiences waiting to be untapped.

Leblon On Artisanal Cachaça

Leblon has a video about industrial versus artisanal cachaça or, as it's often referred to here, "cachaça de alambique". For those unfamiliar with the differences, it's a must-watch and definitely worth six minutes of your time.

Photo Credit: Leticia Gomes

I actually met Paulo Magoulas (above) at a meeting of the Confraria de Cachaça do Copo Furado this past July. His explanation of the the key differences between the two production methods starts about a minute and forty seconds into the video. He's credited here as the president of the Brazilian Cachaça Academy in Rio. 

As I recounted in an early post about my rating system, a wine journalist once told me that, at the end of the day, there were just three kinds of wine: "Good", "sucks", and "more please." If a producer that uses industrial methods creates something that pleases the palate, I don't much care whether they distilled the thing in a column still, pot still, or neighbor's kitchen sink.

(Okay... I'll admit... I'd care a little if it came from the sink.)

That said, what a distiller gains in volume he generally loses in control over the product, as well as overall character.

Sagatiba clearly sees a market for products produced in either fashion. Its Pura brand uses the industrial column-still method, while Velha uses the artisanal pot-still technique. Luxury Experience has the details.

I gave Pura a three-and-a-half-barrel rating, so I certainly didn't think it was a terrible result of industrial techniques. I still stand by my contention, however, that a lot of personality got distilled out of it. (I compared it to how "good" vodkas are supposed to kind of "disappear" into a mixer, which is a pretty terrible way to look at your craft if you happen to make vodka for a living.) A Pura-based caipirinha certainly isn't the "mortal sin" that Paulo says one commits by mixing with an industrial cachaça. (I save the "mortal sin" designation for folks who sneak from my cachaça stash.)

(Sidenote: I haven't yet gotten around to Velha, but the samples have been staring at me from the counter for months now.)

In any case, taste what you like. I won't judge. *8-)

How to Make Brazilian Handcrafted Cachaça

How to Make Brazilian Handcrafted Cachaça 1/9
Originally uploaded by Thiago Montenegro

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