Checking out new tastes is one of the best parts about drinking (and eating, and dating. . . ). I’m a brown liquor guy most of the year, except in summer when gin becomes the alternate spirit to scotch and bourbon. However, I like dark rums and some rum cocktails, so I figured cachaça would be a rum substitute. Cachaça is made from sugar cane juice, just like rum, but for me, the similarities end there. A better comparison in taste and in application for the drink is tequila. It has a similar heat and earthiness that you get from tequila. It mixes well, especially in caipirinhas (with lime and sugar), and if you prefer clear liquors, here’s another to add to your repertoire.

Like most spirits around the world, cachaça was made with what was abundant. In Poland, it was potatoes for vodka; in the British Isles, it was wheat and barley for whiskey; in the case of Brazil, the country’s official drink was first distilled about 400 years ago from sugar cane. The sugar cane juice is fermented for 24 hours after extraction, which brings it to about 80 proof (40% alcohol). Most are bottled immediately. The good folks of Brazil are actively protecting this resource, just as wine-producing countries like France and Italy, and spirit producers like Mexico with tequila and Scotland with scotch whiskey. It might be too late to stop the bastardization of samba and all those videos on the Web, but cachaça, whose export has increase more than 3 times since 1999, is being regulated. All this is to say that it’s a good time to take an interest.