Cachaça

Cachaça is a distilled beverage from Brazil, as important to the country as vodka is to Russia and tequila is to Mexico. Essentially it is an aguárdente - a spirit distilled from fruits or vegetables - in this case, the juices of the sugarcane. Cachaça is distinct from rum though, which is made from the molasses not the cane’s juice. The spirit was invented in the mid-1500s in Brazil, when Portuguese colonisers began to cultivate sugarcane. Somewhere in a sugar mill around São Paulo, some stems of rough sugarcane were forgotten and yielded a foamy, nonalcoholic juice that naturally fermented. The drink had a strong effect on the body, was frequently used as a painkiller, and it was served to slaves for centuries. Eventually the Portuguese decided to distill and age it, creating a new type of aguárdente and named it cachaça. There are many different kinds of wood (oak, cherry, and jequitibá rosa among them) used for ageing the spirit, each leaving different traces of taste - some with a more floral flavour, others with a hint of vanilla or cinnamon.