SAO PAULO, BRAZIL -- The first time I encountered sugar-cane liquor was in a palm-frond hut in West Africa, by the light of a kerosene lantern. I could tell by the first rude mouthful that the clear bottles in front of me might spell trouble. I was right -- it wasn't long before the octogenarians around me were gesticulating wildly and cursing each other's progeny. There might have been a fight if any of them could actually have got out of their chairs.
Little did I know that I would one day find myself sipping an upscale version of the same drink at $100 a bottle in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Because cachaca, as Brazil's cane liquor is known, is finally hitting its stride.
Any country can make cane liquor, but in Brazil it's a national preoccupation. You can't visit the country without encountering the ubiquitous spirit, be it purchased for a few centavos in minuscule plastic cups on the roadside, or by the bottle in trendy restaurants for trendier sums. It was the symbolic drink of several of Brazil's great rebellions, and in 2000, then-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso used it to toast the 500th anniversary of Brazil's discovery by the Portuguese.
Two billion litres of the beverage are produced every year, and 99 per cent of that stays in Brazil, to be imbibed to the tune of 11 litres per inhabitant per year. It's estimated there are more than 5,000 brands of cachaca in Brazil.
So it's hardly surprising to find the country has a culture of sophisticated production for its beloved liquor. Adherents proclaim that one day the best cachacas will compete head-on with the finest whiskies and cognacs, and the rest of the world may just be starting to perk up and pay attention. Exports have risen over the past few years, and in 2000 numbered 10 million litres.
The word caipirinha is also found on an increasing number of lips -- the cocktail made with cachaca, lime, sugar and crushed ice could conceivably do for cachaca what the margarita did for tequila. After all, about 65 to 90 per cent of all tequila consumed is found in margaritas, and tequila sales increased in the United States more than 1,500 per cent from 1975 to 1995. Could cachaca be next in line?
It was at Olinda Prudencia, a tastefully designed nightspot in Sao Paulo, that I first realized cachaca had already arrived. Perhaps it was that bottle of Anisio Santiago, priced at upwards of $100 that tipped me off. "Brazilians used to consider cachaca a poor man's drink," the club's owner, Marco, told me as I marvelled at its smoothness. "But now people realize it can be as fine as any single malt."
Even in more modest eateries an extensive list of a few dozen cachacas can be found, always listed by the Brazilian state they hail from.
What makes a cachaca great? It starts with the selection of the best-quality sugar cane. Cachaca is made from fresh cane juice, unlike rum, which is made from molasses. When the fermented cane juice is being distilled, the finest producers will discard as much as 80 per cent of it: The first 40 per cent, known as the head, goes through the still. The last 40 per cent, the tail, is the least desirable and contains all the impurities. In addition, some cachacas are double distilled.
The next step is aging. Artisanal producers use oak casks or the wood of any of several indigenous species to add colour and flavour. Aging typically lasts from one to 12 years. A great number of cachacas have an alcoholic content higher than 40 per cent.
According to the Brazilian Program for the Development of Cachaca, there are more than 30,000 producers scattered across every region of Brazil, the majority of which are small artisanal distilleries. I had heard about Paulinho's alembique, or still, from one of the bars in the centre of Mogi des Cruzes, a small town outside Sao Paulo. The bar served his cambuci, a fragrant cachaca preserved with a sour, lemony fruit found in Brazil's Atlantic coastal forest that locals traditionally use to fight fever. His still was located up in the mountains above the town, and though the directions were vague, we were assured that everyone knew Paulinho. They did, and not just the ones who looked like they were fond of a drink. Paulinho had been producing cachaca here for about 45 years.
When we arrived, he and a gang of men were loading crates of persimmons from his plantation on to a truck. "Take a look at this," he winked, and led us to an artisanal copper still where a fermented mash of persimmons was being distilled. Reminiscent of grappa, the fruity but very potent clear liquor washed down well in the afternoon sun. Paulinho's cachaca works, housed in an ancient wooden barn, were just what you'd expect of the small producer who sells his cache on the premises only. Three massive oak barrels towered along a stone wall, their taps protruding. On the other side of the wall lay the distillation apparatus, blackened by use. Everything had a very well worn quality to it, suggesting that a great deal of drink had come out of Paulinho's over the years.
In Sao Miguel, another town not far from Sao Paulo, lay Alembique Casteluche, where the Casteluche family had been steadily growing their company for decades. Their product was famous in the region, but again, it was only available for purchase on the premises. When we got there, however, things were changing. The family was in the process of constructing a massive modern facility that would more than quadruple their bottling capacity, likely in an effort to cash in on the liquor's boom. Nearby lay a disused relic of earlier times, a gargantuan oak barrel three storeys tall. I was suitably impressed.
"We nearly packed it all in after my father died," said Geraldo Casteluche, a soft-spoken man around 50 years old. His father was shot and killed by bandits last year as they tried to loot his cash register, a mishap all too typical of the environs of Sao Paulo, one of the world's biggest cities.
In Canada, cachaca is only slowly coming into its own. In Ontario and Quebec, the liquor control boards import only one brand, Pirassununga 51, considered rather pedestrian in Brazil. And worse, it usually seems to be out of stock.
"Liquor board monopolies make it very hard to introduce a product from the top down," says Bill Shadwick, an entrepreneur who tried to popularize a high-end cachaca in Ontario and finally gave up. But Canada may be behind the times -- New York liquor stores boast a selection of aged cachacas; bottling plants have opened in Germany; and in London, where Shadwick now lives, "all the posh bars have caipirinhas on their lists, and carry several brands of good cachaca."
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