TCV Craft Spirits Book

Rhum Agricole/Cachaça

NOVO FOGO BRAZIL, PARANA/VALE DOS VINHEDOS Certified Organic Cachaça USDA Organic-Certified Cachaça, handcrafted in small- batches from natural Brazilian sugarcane. Copper-pot distilled; using only the heart. Bottles are handmade from recycled glass; hand-signed and batch numbered in a zero-waste distillery. Gold Barrel-Aged Organic Cachaça #463278 / 750ml / $28.67 Aged two years in 50-gallon bourbon casks, Gold gets a lot of nice qualities from its time in American oak barrels, and the intersection of flavors between the vegetal and tropical cachaça and the deeper vanilla, cinnamon and caramel from the barrel works well... One of the best- aged cachaças on the American market... 92pts The Tasting Panel Magazine 4½ Stars Very Highly Recommended, DrinkSpirits Rested for one year for incredible smoothness, “Silver manages a beautiful balance between a spirit that has a ton of flavor and one which is easy to drink. …It’s easy to fall for this expertly crafted spirit.” 4½ Stars Very Highly Recommended, DrinkSpirits Tanager Cachaca #189501 / 750ml / $27.33 The “Tanager” expression is the first two-woods cachaça broadly available in the USA and it mixes the Brazilian South’s two favorite woods. Aged in repurposed oak barrels and finished in casks of arariba (Brazilian zebrawood) for a natural red color and a distinctive mountain earthiness. This truly unique cachaça suggests tropical fruit, grass, cinnamon bark, and other holiday spices; it can be sipped alone or as the base spirit in twists of classic cocktails. Silver Organic Cachaça #506865 / 750ml / $25.33

Cachaça

PITÚ BRAZIL Silver Brazilian Cachaça #659445 / 1.0L / $12.67

You Know Rum—But What Is Cachaça? “Cachaça is most definitely not a rum,” says Dragos Axinte of Novo Fogo Cachaça. “At the highest level, cachaça is made from fresh-pressed sugarcane juice, while rum is made from molasses. Molasses is a by-product of the process of making sugar from sugarcane and has very different characteristics from sugarcane juice, since it’s been boiled. I would say that [rum and cachaça] are distant cousins.” Cachaça is often called Brazilian rum, a nickname that isn’t entirely wrong: both rum and cachaça are made from sugar, but rum is made from sugarcane by-products, like molasses, whereas cachaça is made straight from the sugarcane itself. Because cachaça is distilled from raw sugarcane, it retains a grassy, sulfurous, earthy quality that rum lacks—rum, by turn, is sweeter with more notes of vanilla. SMITHSONIANMAG.COM

Family-owned Pitú has a reputation for world class quality and is the most globally exported cachaça brand. Made from pure, unrefined, first pressed sugar cane juice, Pitú’s master distiller carefully blends the different batches to yield a consistent character and superior level of quality.

88pts Wine Enthusiast Vitoriosa Cachaça #599612 / 750ml / $93.99

A maturation in French oak barrels for five years results in a silky mouthfeel with notes of spices, burnt coconut, vanilla, toffee and almonds. Presented in a beautiful pear- shaped decanter, this premium cachaça is best served at

neat or “on the rock”. 92pts Wine Enthusiast

CRAFT SPIRITS PORTFOLIO