Cachaca and the Brazilian cane spirit

Cut cane, crush it within hours, ferment the green juice for a day or two, distill once, and you have the clear spirit that Brazil has made for nearly five centuries. It smells of grass, fresh sugar and something faintly mineral, and it is not quite like anything else on the shelf.

What cachaca is

Brazilian law reserves the name cachaca for sugar cane spirit produced in Brazil, at 38 to 48 percent alcohol at 20 C, obtained by distilling fermented sugar cane must. Up to six grams of sugar per liter may be added; between six and thirty grams it must be labeled cachaca adocada, sweetened. Cachaca envelhecida, aged, must contain at least half spirit that spent a minimum of one year in wood. The current regulation is Decreto 6.871 of 2009, which replaced the 2003 decree that first fixed the definition.

The United States treated cachaca as plain rum until 2013. After petitions from Brazil and a 2012 agreement under which Brazil would in turn recognize bourbon and Tennessee whiskey, the TTB amended its standards: cachaca is now a type of rum that is a distinctive product of Brazil, and the label may say Cachaca without the word rum. The European Union's rum category, with its ban on added flavorings, is a poorer fit, since many Brazilian producers traditionally start fermentation with maize meal.

IBRAC, the national cachaca institute, describes an industry of thousands of distilleries spread across the whole country, from industrial column-still plants to one-family alambiques.

How it is made

Everything begins with fresh juice. Cane is milled and the juice, sometimes lightly clarified, is fermented with cultured or natural yeast, often with the traditional starter of maize meal. The ferment is short, typically a day or two, and the wash is weak. Industrial producers then run it through continuous columns and reduce with water. Artisanal producers run copper pot stills once, taking a careful heart cut, and the spirit comes off at a low strength, rarely above 75 percent. That low strength keeps the cane in the glass: the grassiness, the fruit, the slight funk that a column strips out.

The unaged product, branca or prata, may rest briefly in neutral tanks or in a wood that adds little. The aged product, ouro or envelhecida, is where Brazil diverges from every other spirit. Oak is used, but so are native woods, and IBRAC lists more than a dozen. Amburana gives deep color, a strongly fruity, spiced aroma and a touch of sweetness; it is the most distinctive and the most divisive. Balsamo gives a greenish tint and a herbal, peppery edge. Jequitiba rosa adds gold and a bouquet close to American oak, while white jequitiba barely marks the spirit. Castanheira, ipe, freijo and amendoim range from gentle rounding to faint color; IBRAC recommends amendoim-rested cachaca for the Caipirinha precisely because it stays neutral. Many producers rest in a native wood for months and then finish in oak, or the reverse.

Styles and regions

The broad split is industrial versus artisanal. Industrial cachaca, column distilled in the state of Sao Paulo and elsewhere, is clean, light and inexpensive, and it is what fills most Caipirinhas in Brazil. Artisanal cachaca, pot distilled in Minas Gerais, Paraty on the Rio coast, Pernambuco and the Northeast, is fuller and more aromatic, and it is the category's claim to a place beside agricole and mezcal. Minas Gerais, especially the Salinas region, is the center of aged, wood-driven styles; Paraty is known for lighter, unaged alambique cachaca. The relation to rum is simplest stated this way: cachaca is to molasses rum what rhum agricole is, a juice spirit, except that it is distilled lower, rested in stranger woods, and never meant to taste like anything but cane.

In cocktails

The Caipirinha is the whole argument in one glass: lime wedges muddled with sugar, cachaca, crushed ice. An unaged artisanal cachaca makes it grassy and bright; an industrial one makes it clean and forgettable; an amburana-aged one makes something warmer and spiced that some people love. The Batida family blends cachaca with fruit pulp and condensed milk, the coconut version being the beach standard. A Rabo de Galo, cachaca with sweet vermouth and a bitter, is Brazil's stirred classic and shows how well aged cachaca takes the Manhattan shape. Cachaca stands in for rum in a Daiquiri or for pisco in a sour, and a jequitiba-rested bottle makes a fine Old Fashioned with demerara.

Buying by style

Keep an unaged pot-still cachaca for Caipirinhas and sours; the extra cost over industrial brands buys most of the flavor. For stirring, an oak-aged cachaca at two to three years. For curiosity, one amburana bottling, understanding that its aroma will dominate any drink it enters. Read the label for alambique (pot still), the wood, the age and the state; those tell you more than the price. Avoid cachaca labeled with a foreign word for rum and no production detail. Within Brazil, bottles labeled aguardente de cana rather than cachaca are the same base category under a broader name and are often fine.

Folklore and fact

The line that cachaca is merely Brazilian rum is true on an American label and false in the glass. Rum as most people know it comes from molasses; cachaca comes from juice, is distilled lower, and rests in woods no rum has met. The legal range is the other place sources drift: a widely read encyclopedia prints 38 to 54 percent, while the Brazilian decrees and the TTB rule that quotes them say 38 to 48. We follow the law.

Sources

• TTB final rule recognizing cachaca, Federal Register, February 25, 2013 (govinfo).
• Decreto 4.851 (2003), text via LegisWeb; replaced by Decreto 6.871 (2009).
• IBRAC, "O que e a Cachaca?" and "Cachaca e madeiras".
• 27 CFR 5.147, Rum (Cornell LII).
• Difford's Guide, "Cachaca" category entry.