Aging Cachaça, Part 7: Castanheira

A few months ago, during Festa Junina, I made Quentão with a cachaça from Ypioca, which declared itself a blend of silver cachaças and castanheira....

Aging Cachaça Part 6: Amendoim do Campo

Amendoim is peanut. So technically, this is a peanut tree. But it doesn’t, as far as I know, produce nuts that anyone eats. It is, however, used in...

Aging Cachaça, Part 5: Ipe Amarelo

I have a bottle of Ipe-aged cachaça sitting in a prominent spot in my collection. Knowing that I would write about it this week, I planned on tasti...

Aging Cachaça Part 4: Jequitibá-rosa

In the top five most popular kinds of wood to age cachaça, Jequitiba-rosa is a star. Found mostly in Southeast Brazil, each tree is known to live f...

Aging Cachaça Part 3: Balsamo

Balsamo, or cabreuva, is an increasingly popular wood in which to age cachaça. This tree, whose scientific name is Myroxylon balsamum, can be found...

Aging Cachaça Part Two: Amburana

Amburana (Amburana Cearensis), sometimes known as Imburana, umburana, cerejeira, cumaru-do-ceará, amburana-de-cheiro, or cumaru-de-cheiro, is one o...

Aging Cachaça Part One: American and French Oak

Look, I don’t have to sit here and pretend like no one in the history of the world has written about American and French Oak, where they come from,...

An Exploration of Wood Used to Age Cachaça

For the previous six weeks or so, I’ve spent time outlining how cachaça is made. In the last part of the series, I outlined the aging process. In t...