A couple of weeks ago, at Tales of the Cocktail 2009, Karen and I showed up Thursday morning at the Hotel Monteleone for our first seminars. We were greeted by a pair of women in "tropical" attire (for lack of a better word), who had signs that said "Free Cachaca!", and who were giving out some promotional stuff for Leblon brand cachaca. We wandered over to the rooms at the side, and checked out the Leblon tasting room, because Karen didn't know what cachaca was, and I was curious about what "Free Cachaca!" meant.
For those of you who aren't aware of how the tasting rooms worked, here's a quick synopsis. Each producer had a room for a fixed amount of time. They were likely required to produce at least two different types of drinks with their products for the attendees to sample. Most producers had some sort of free gear and/or a presentation about their products as well.
On to the Leblon tasting room! In Leblon's tasting room, I talked with Gilles Merlet, the French master cognac distiller who works for Leblon, about their process, and about cachaca in general. Cachaca is a Brazilian sugarcane liquor that's wildly popular down there - something on the order of a billion liters of the stuff is made annually in Brazil.
The main thing that separates cachaca from rum is that cachaca is produced from sugarcane juice, much like a Caribbean rhum agricole. That's why the US government requires it to be labeled as rum, instead of as its own cachaca category. Hence the "Free Cachaca!" campaign - they don't want to be lumped in with rum. There must be something else that's different about the way cachaca's made, because cachaca and rum don't really taste or smell much alike, even when we're talking about rhum agricole. Cachaca has its own odd flavor- kind of harsh on its own, and very different. It's still somewhat sweet, and obviously comes from sugarcane though.
In the tasting room, we had our first Caipirinhas, which are a Brazilian drink composed of muddled lime eighths (4 of them, or half a lime worth), sugar syrup - about 3/4 oz, and 2 oz cachaca. To make one, take your lime eighths, muddle them to death in the bottom of the shaker, add the cachaca, the sugar syrup and a reasonable amount of ice. Shake it well, then dump it into a glass, ice and all. It's one of the very few cocktails that actually retain the ice used in preparation.
We both felt that the cachaca went surprisingly well with the citrus and sugar, despite the funky odor and taste of the straight stuff.
Later during Tales, we attended a seminar where we got little airplane bottles of Cabana cachaca, which is a competing brand to Leblon, and is aged in native jequitiba rosa wood, instead of the cognac casks that Leblon uses.
The following weekend, I enlisted my brother Andy's help in a taste-off between Leblon and Cabana; he's always up for something strange and drink related.
Our procedure for the taste off was as follows:
First, we sampled the straight spirits. Based on that test, we both preferred the Leblon to the Cabana, due to the slightly sweeter taste. Both were equally funky, which must have something to do with the production process.
Next, we made a pair of Caipirinhas using the same liquor. I cut up 2 limes, and made sure to get an even mix of eighths from each lime into each drink. I then added exactly 3/4 oz of brown sugar syrup to each glass, followed by 1 1/2 oz of cachaca. (I did 1 1/2 oz because the airplane bottle only held that much).
When both drinks were prepared, we each took a sip. The surprise was that the Leblon wasn't the winner in that trial - its higher sweetness made the drink almost cloying, while the drier Cabana made for a really good Caipirinha. I think that in the future, I'll make my Leblon Caipirinhas with less sugar syrup than the recipe calls for, just in case!
Final result: Andy was convinced that Cabana was the way to go. I think you can't go wrong with either - just adjust your recipe accordingly.
-M
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