Cachaça: prejudice in Brazil, success abroad – 03/28/2024 – Food

Despite being a national symbol, cachaça does not reach the top spot in Brazilians’ alcoholic preferences — just look at the drinks menu in many bars out there to see the predominance of drinks such as gin and vodka.

Even so, sugarcane distillate has been gaining more and more space in the international market, in a movement that has helped to restore its prestige throughout Brazil.

When he started producing Pindorama cachaça, in the mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro, in 2015, advertiser and artist Rafael Daló chose to sell his bottles first in Portugal. Because it is made in an artisanal, organic and sustainable way, using only the finest part of the distillation process, each bottle costs around R$ 130 — around 10 times more than industrialized cachaças, a price that is not very competitive for the national market.

Shortly afterwards, in 2019, Pindorama won the silver medal in the International Spirits Challenge competition, in London. And it was precisely this approval from the European market that made its debut on the national market possible. Even with all the merits of artisanal production, the international award seal glued to each bottle is what, in the end, convinces Brazilians to buy, say the producers.

One of the most awarded cachaças abroad and the favorite of many bartenders, the Gaucho Weber Haus also uses international airs to gain its space in the market. In addition to the 14 medals, the partner states that the different model of the bottle and the brand itself, which may appear to be German or American, help to arouse the curiosity of potential consumers.

“First they see a brand that looks foreign, and this breaks down that initial prejudice, until they try it and like it”, says Evandro Weber.

For Bruno Videira, who researches the history of cachaça at USP, prejudice is still, in fact, the main barrier to the acceptance of cachaça in Brazil.

“It’s mainly social, class, but also color, because cachaça is a drink historically closely linked to enslaved people, to black people”, he states. “At the beginning of the last century, the São Paulo elite preferred wine, for example, because it was something more cosmopolitan and civilized than cachaça, which referred to the colonial past.”

“Throughout the 20th century, disbelief was created in relation to products from Brazil, which is seen only as an exporter of raw materials. That’s why we started with Portugal: we wanted to see how the people there, without this emotional burden and history, would react to the drink”, says Daló, from Pindorama, which today can be found, in addition to Portugal, in England, Austria and Germany, and soon in Italy. “We discovered that they can even drink pure cachaça.”

Another issue that explains the discrepancy in the performance of cachaça in the national and international market is the dynamics of the beverage sector itself, in which a few multinational companies manage to create hype like gin and tonic, for example.

In the country, the sector’s coordination takes place at events such as Cachaça Fair Trade, which took place in São Paulo this week, and through entities such as the Instituto Brasileiro da Cachaça. There is also support from Apex, the Brazilian Export and Investment Promotion Agency, to promote cachaça abroad. But nothing that matches, of course, the global marketing investment capacity of large multinational beverage companies.

“It is unlikely that an independent brand of cachaça will be able to build a following, or create hype in the market”, says Guilherme Boavista, from Cãna, a cachaça created with a focus on the foreign market and which has gained space in the United States, Europe and, more recently , In Canada.

As exclusivity contracts between manufacturers and bars tend to revolve around gin, whiskey and vodka, he says, cachaças are able to speak individually with customers around the world, gradually gaining their place in bars and on shelves.

This movement is already bearing fruit. According to the Brazilian Cachaça Institute, in 2023 Brazil’s revenue from exporting the drink exceeded US$20 million (around R$99.5 million), 52% more than in 2021, and the number of importing countries rose from 75 to 80. In addition, cocktail bars dedicated exclusively to the drink are also beginning to appear.

Later this year, the city of Washington, in the USA, should gain a caipirinhas bar run by Radovan Jankovic, a Bosnian living in the American capital and who recently decided to materialize his passion for cachaça at Cana, which should open later this year.

Interestingly, Cana is also the name of one of the newest bars in Vila Buarque, in São Paulo, which exclusively serves drinks made with cachaça. The idea there, however, is not to elevate cachaça to a refined level, but to share with customers the multiple possibilities for enjoying the drink.

“My idea is to show people how to consume cachaça, taking advantage of all its versatility”, says Murilo Rocha, partner of the bar and cachaça Coscobeu, produced by his family in southern Bahia since 1982. “When everyone in a room is By consuming cachaça and speaking well, people are won over and things become cool. And when it becomes cool, prejudices begin to fall.”