
Single estate. Single vintage. Barrel aged. No, we’re not talking about wine—this is the language used to describe two exciting spirits from South America: cachaça and pisco.
Since pisco is a grape-based brandy, perhaps it should be unsurprising that it draws comparison to wine. After all, like wine or grappa, the character changes vastly depending on the grapes from which it is made. A particularly pleasant surprise in this month’s reviews: two new Distiller’s Reserve piscos from Campo de Encanto, each made with grapes harvested from a single vineyard. Compared side by side, the differences were striking: one fruity and vibrant, the other floral and delicate.
Meanwhile, rum-like cachaça, distilled from sugar cane, doesn’t usually bring wine-making techniques to mind. But perhaps that’s likely to change. For example, a 2014 vintage cachaça bottling was among this month’s reviews, which the producer, Leblon, described as “like Brazilian Beaujolais.”
Not literally, of course—but like Beaujolais, will we start to see new cachaça vintages appear each year? It’s exciting to see producers embrace the fact that their spirits are agricultural products, and showcasing how bottlings can vary year over year depending on the harvest.
The growing number of barrel-aged cachaças encourages another parallel with the wine world. Artisan brand Avua continues to be a leader in the space. When it launched a couple of years ago it laid claim to be the first single-sourced cachaça, and rolled out its luscious butterscotchy Amburana bottling, aged for two years in a Brazilian hardwood barrel.
Bartenders are featuring these spirits in new, creative ways on bar menus alongside more familiar pisco sours and cachaça-based mojitos. For example, at newly-opened Mace, cachaça meshes with earthy/nutty banana, cocoa nib and pecan orgeat syrup in the creamy “cocoa bean” cocktail, while pisco’s natural fruitiness is played up with peach liqueur, egg white and cinnamon in a light, frothy “cinnamon” elixir.
1Cachaça
2Pisco