What to Drink During the World Cup: A Guide to Cachaca, Brazil's National Spirit Troy Patterson - Slate
go to original June 18, 2014

'Vamos Brasilizar' - John Travolta's Brazilian Cachaça Commercial (EEF)

What do people drink in Brazil?
Not the tap water, if they can help it. Popular refreshments include coffee, coconut water, cashew-fruit juice, guaraná-flavored soft drinks, and Xingu black beer. The national spirit is cachaça.

What is cachaça?
Cachaça is often referred to, crudely, as Brazilian rum. There is some justice to this, because both rum and cachaça are made from sugar and because the majority of the cachaças consumed in Brazil are pretty crude themselves, which is why the liquor’s countless nicknames include cat choker, tiger’s breath, and dog piss. However, most rums are made from molasses, and cachaça (like rhum agricole) is distilled from sugar-cane juice.

What’s it taste like?
There is an earthy quality to it. You will detect grassiness and a rustic vegetality in many fine cachaças. You will notice that many less-fine cachaças taste like dirt and are, correspondingly, dirt cheap—$1 per liter or so in Brazil, where consumption is sufficiently heavy that this liquor ranks, behind vodka and soju, as the third-best-selling in the world.

Who is America’s most famous Ypióca enthusiast?
That would be John Travolta.

Read the rest at Slate

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