Spirit
Cachaça
Cachaça is Brazil's national spirit, distilled from the juice of fresh-pressed sugarcane rather than the molasses used for most rum, giving it a bright, grassy, vegetal and faintly funky fresh-cane character. Bottled at around 38 to 48 percent alcohol, it is sold either clear and unaged as cachaça branca or aged in wood as the golden cachaça amarela, and it is the essential base of the caipirinha, Brazil's beloved lime-and-sugar cocktail.
BalancedSpirit-forward
At a glance
Signature
Sugarcane & Grassy
Banana
Strength
Spirit-forward
by taste profile
Bright, grassy and vegetal, cachaça leads with the smell of fresh-crushed sugarcane and cut grass over green olive, unripe banana and a faint sulphurous or damp-earth funk that marks its cane-juice origin. Unaged branca is clean, pungent and herbaceous with a warming alcohol bite at around 38 to 48 percent, while wood-aged cachaça softens into vanilla, dried fruit, warm spice and the singular cinnamon-and-floral perfume of native Brazilian timbers such as amburana. The finish is dry and grassy, longer and rounder in aged bottlings, and earthier and more aromatic than a comparable molasses rum.
Taste balance
BitternessSmooth
SmoothBitter
StrengthStrong
LightStrong