Cachaçagora - Cachaça, Caipirinha, And Cocktails

"What's In Your Cabinet?" -- The Cachaçagora Collection

I've been fortunate in that, over time, I've managed to amass quite a collection of cachaça. During the last days of my sabbatical, I decided to sit down with my liquor cabinet and take inventory. 

The result is now publicly available in two forms. You can leave a comment on any of the database's cells if you sign in. If you just want to look, there's a read-only version. 

Obviously, if you know something about these brands that I don't, please leave a comment. I haven't yet had time to Google the information needed to fill in some of the gaps. 

Review: Aroma Brasil Jequitibá Rosa

My wife and I recently went to one of my favorite restaurants in Chicago -- the Atwood Cafe at the Hotel Burnham. When I teach online community classes, I always take the trainees to this restaurant. You can pick any entree and not go wrong, however, the graham-cracker-fried calamari is an absolute must.

As we sat down, the waitress asked if we wanted drinks. I asked if they had cachaça. No? I settled for a seven-and-seven, an old Gomes family mainstay.

When the dessert menu came, I noticed they indeed had cachaça! I pointed it out to the waitress, who graciously kept it off the bill -- my reward for catching a minor lapse in menu-memory.

There in my hand was a couple of ounces of crystal clear cachaça from a label I had never heard of: Aroma Brasil.

Let's just say that the free cachaça wasn't the only pleasant surprise.

Over on Twitter, Mixology's Helmut Adam once lamented that cachaça makers did not take full advantage of the wide variety of woods available in Brasil. ("Getting tired of the taste of used bourbon oak.") Not so here. Aroma Brasil offers cachaça aged in either bálsamo or jequitibá rosa -- both native woods. I tasted the latter.

This white lightly tinted cachaça, I was told after contacting its former importer a week later, was so good and so smooth that bartenders actually couldn't bear to make caipirinhas with it. Caipirinhas, of course, mean volume and there just aren't that many of us cachaça-sippers up there in the states.

Tasting it, I believed it. Making an Aroma Brasil caipirinha certainly wouldn't be the gross affront that, say, a Single-Barrel-Jack-Daniels-And-Coke would be, but close. 

I often disagree with folks who refer to cachaça as a "sugar-cane brandy", but this is right up there with the most elegant sipping spirits I've had.

Right now, distribution is severely limited. The first importer managed to get it into various places in Florida and... Skokie, Illinois. This wonderful find was last seen in the stateside care of Jose Silva, general manager of Peninsula Beverages.

And, thus, I'm proud to deliver unto my readers Cachaçagora's first five-barrel-rated cachaça.

Review: Beija Cachaça

This entrant, currently available in-and-around New England, has been in the "Tasting Lab" (i.e., my kitchen counter) for a pretty long time. The Beija Guys (as they two young entrepreneurs are called in their newsletter) found me and sent over a couple of bottles a while ago.

While Beija is maybe not my first choice taken straight — and I strongly deny that cocktail-mixing is a universally necessary evil when it comes to white cachaça — it makes for a very capable and versatile mixer, much like Sagatiba Pura. During my wife's birthday party, I used Beija in a 2:3::cachaça:milk brunch cocktail with sugar, nutmeg, and a dash of vanilla extract. Two guests enjoyed it, one not so much. All told, not a bad ratio considering my good-entertainer's tendency to mix things a little on the stronger side.

A few after-work caipirinhas and Cafés Irlandês continued to make Beija a welcome addition to the bar throughout the month. It's pretty tough to go wrong with this one.

Now... If only they could inch westward from Mass., Conn., and Rhode Island...

Three-and-a-half barrels with a bullet. Definitely one to watch.

Review: Cabana Cachaça

It's a long-ish story of how the bottle came to be in my possession (involving dropping in unannounced at Cabana's PR firm), but Cabana found me and gave me a bottle for review.

If all you know of the brand is what you see in their infamous ads, I know that a lot of you really want to hate Cabana Cachaça.

Of course, that would mean that our country's puritans and knee-jerk protestniks would be missing out. Cabana Cachaça is actually quite good — very crisp and smooth, though with a somewhat unique-but-not-overpowering sharpness in the finish. (They certainly employ some of the craft methods that I find characteristic of some of my favorite cachaças thus far — small-batch distillation and aging in jequitibá rosa barrels.)

The zillion-dollar question: Is Cabana the super-premium cachaça they're marketing it as? I'm taking a wait-and-see. The U.S. is still searching for its "Grey Goose" or "Patrón" of cachaça. Cabana, from its marketing to the bottle design, is definitely aiming in that direction.

Like with Leblon, I'm curious as to whether Cabana will be introducing a... umm... let's call it a super-duper-premium cachaça? Further, at US$34.99 a bottle, are they pricing themselves out of the range where cocktail economics carry volume? (I'd imagine a Cabana caipirinha ain't cheap.) Having introduced a product with their amp turned to the mythical "eleven" setting, where do you go from here?

You can always tune in here if-or-when the answer presents itself.

Until then... Four barrels.

Review: Boca Loca

The folks at Boca Loca found me here at Cachaçagora and thoughtfully sent over a bottle for review.

Overall, good. For those of you who perhaps tire of cachaças aged in old oak barrels, Boca Loca offers a nice alternative that you ought to try — 90 days in native Brazilian jequitibá barrels

The very strong caramel flavors darn near put this cachaça into liqueur territory. Highly drinkable, especially straight, but you're really going to want to be careful with this one.

Thankfully, this cachaça has better distribution than many, though I haven't yet seen it in Chicago liquor stores. You can see where to buy Boca Loca thanks to this handy map.

Three-and-a-half barrels for Boca Loca. If you find this one, tell me what you think.

Oh... Just to keep everything in one place, here's a cocktail recipe, the Herb Cane, that I pointed to earlier.

Review: Leblon Cachaça

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):

• Alex de Carvalho via Flickr
• Phil Gomes
• Leblon via PR.Com

Review: Rio D "Noite" Cachaça

An otherwise pleasant citrus characteristic in the nose and a quick hit of sweetness upon entering the mouth is followed by a sharp astringency in the finish, similar to what you might expect to taste in, say, Christian Brothers white brandy.

Generates a decently satisfying caipirinha, though. And maybe a good host of other mixed drinks. 

That said, I'm going two-and-a-half barrels.You can't really do much with this unless you do some work to soft-pedal its more unpleasant characteristics.

Random sidenote: Turns out I'll be taking a (decidedly non-cachaça-related) business trip to Atlanta soon, so I may check out the Rio D Wednesdays at Chima, a churrascaria in Buckhead.

Review: Sagatiba Pura

I've often thought about what I've come to call the Vodka Distiller's Dilemma. This little homespun rule observes that the degree to which the popular culture values the vodka maker's craft is the degree to which club patrons can exclaim "Wow! You can hardly taste the vodka!" when said product is put in a mixed drink. The esteem ascribed to that arduously crafted spirit is, therefore, proportional to its ability to hide itself in, say, the average Ocean Spray product.

As such, I'm driven to sympathize with Sagatiba Pura, Sagatiba's multi-distilled white cachaça, which sits alongside its more premium Velha and Preçiosa lines. Clearly (no pun intended) much effort goes into this fine spirit, though that effort may end up lost on many.

By itself, it is very smooth. Perhaps not my first choice for a sipping cachaça but, then again, that's probably what Velha and Preçiosa are for.

As a mixer, though, it's darn near perfect. This past weekend, I tried it in a traditional caipirinha as well as the batida de morango recipe (more like a strawberry caipirinha, really) posted the other day. Sagatiba Pura seemed to scream for the fruits to bring out the sugarcane characteristics, which may have been muted during the multiple-distillation process that appears to be the basis for the product's marketing.

Sagatiba Pura was quite unnecessarily savaged in this Forbes review, ranking dead last in a blind tasting of five cachaças. With comments like "the sugar in the caipirinha hides a multitude of sins", it really makes me wonder what the guy was actually tasting. Sounds more like he was looking for an excuse to use that line.

I hope that the Forbes review didn't discourage folks from giving Sagatiba a try. Going three-and-a-half-barrels-with-a-bullet on this one.

Oh... And if you're just now joining us on Cachaçagora, you'll also want to check out the cachaça feature that Mark Tafoya did, featuring Sagatiba.

Oh... One more thing... Happy Birthday to me... *8-)

Review: Cachaça Purajacuhy (Organic)

Matt Damon (I think) once said that just because a film is "independent" doesn't necessarily mean that it's "good". Similarly, at the grocery store, I often don't trust products labeled "organic". I sometimes find the taste a little too earthy. Besides, at thirtysomething, any pesticides or fertilizers that they've been putting on my produce would have probably done its damage to me by now.

So, imagine my initial skepticism when I sampled the proudly organic Cachaça Purajacuhy. I say "proudly" because the top of the bottle's neck featured a German organic certification seal. (For those who don't know, currently only a single-digit percentage of Brazil's cachaça is exported, of which a good chunk ends up in Germany.) I was honestly expecting that kind of cachaça that smells as if someone decided to throw their lawn clippings into a moonshine still.

(I'm not joking. A few cachaças I've tried do have this aroma. NB: Presence of dude-mowing-lawn smell means that such a cachaça starts at the one-barrel rating and, in any case, I probably wouldn't burden you with it.)

This light-gold cachaça hits all of the right sugarcane notes without being overpowering. Very mellow and smooth. I could easily have a few glasses of this with friends. That is, of course, if I could acquire this again. Near as I can tell, this one is not available in the states. Neither, to my knowledge, are other organic cachaça brands I've read about (TR).

I'm giving this a very strong "four-barrel" rating.

Review: Ypióca 160-Year Anniversary Commemorative

First, a story:

When I started getting interested in cachaça, I started looking for it in grocery and liquor stores. Often, it's quite a treat when you do find it, even if it is shoehorned into the "Rum" section's bottom shelves.

One time, my wife's mom and great-aunt were in Chicago for a visit. We took them to Fox & Obel, a high-end grocery store where, no doubt, the likes of Barack Obama have gone arugula-shopping once or twice.

I darted to the liquor section and, lo-and-behold, there were the requisite cachaça selections. I immediately ran around the store, looking for my mother-in-law. Then, dragging her to the liquor section, I pointed proudly at my find.

Well... Mamãe wasn't all that impressed. She pointed to one of the bottles -- Ypióca -- and stuck her tongue out. I think F&O was asking for somewhere around $25-$28 a bottle. Evidently, it was not to her tastes.

So, what was I to think when I show up to Mamãe's house and she presents me with this elegant package?

Well, I gave it a try.

According to the press release (site doesn't offer a permalink, sorry), this was released in July 2006. They're still advertising it fairly dramatically, as evidenced by this oversized clock that hangs above one of the ticketing areas in Rio's Antônio Carlos Jobim International Airport.

As to the cachaça itself... For some odd reason, the Ypióca folks thought to introduce a malt into the process in addition to aging the product for six years. Personally, I might've preferred it if they'd concentrated on keeping the shifting variables low, focusing on aging instead of adding.

The result is this diabetic-shock-inducing aroma that carries the strong scent of wet brown sugar. Once in the mouth, it kind of behaved like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction when she exclaims "I'm not gonna be ignored, Dan!"

Not sure if they were going for the elegant after-dinner dessert liqueur or well-crafted sipping spirit. Definitely interested in their other attempts at finer cachaça if it happens in, well, fewer than another 160 years.

One barrel.

(Note to PETA: Despite the Fatal Attraction reference, no bunnies were boiled during this review.)