Germana Cachaça Single Barrel 2014

Description

Welcome to the world’s most consumed cane spirit, Cachaça! From the land of Carnival, the Amazon and Pele we are excited to release this handmade, 8 year old, French Oak matured masterpiece of Brazilian rum from a 100 year old distillery – the Germana Cachaça Single Barrel 2014.

With only 210 bottles of this handmade Cachaca worldwide and presented in a hand-sewn banana leaf…its a true rum (or Cachaca) collectors bottle.

Now ‘tis true that technically this month’s Members Extra is NOT a rum. It is a Cachaça (pronounced ‘ka-shah-sa’ – it may take a bit, if you’ve had a few, but it will come!). Cachaça is produced from sugar BUT…Cachaça has an AOC (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée), which means that it has to be produced, distilled and bottled in Brazil to be able to use the name Cachaça plus it is also single distilled, rather than double distilled.

Interestingly, Cachaça is the world’s most consumed cane-spirit. Estimates of cachaça’s annual production have it at around 1.5 billion liters per year. To put that figure in perspective, Bacardi makes around 200 million litres annually. So why don’t we hear as much about Cachaça? Simple…the vast majority is consumed domestically within Brazil.

Germana is a handmade Cachaça produced by the Caetano family for over 100 years, in Vista Alegre (Minas Gerais, Brazil). The name Germana means ‘one of a kind, pure or special’. This is a farm to bottle Cachaça distillery using methods from previous centuries throughout the production process. The 600 Hectare farm the distillery sits on is maintained without chemicals, the cane is hand cut with machete and is still transported from the fields to the mill by donkey-drawn carts.

The Germana Cachaça has the nickname ‘Cachaça da Palha’ in Brazil as it is traditionally wrapped in Banana (Palha) leaves. Why? Well – Sergio Caetano (the founder of Germana) was once a ‘Tropeiro’ who transported his farm products like meat, corn cheese and (of course) Cachaça to the nearby gold mines on the back of mules. Occasionally a mule would slip on the treacherous mountain tracks – and bottles would be broken. To prevent these expensive losses – Sergio began wrapping his bottles in banana leaves. And thus, a tradition was born. You’ll notice your single cask bottle comes in a genuine hand-sewn Palha Tube. Easily one of the (if not the) coolest bottle tubes I’ve EVER seen!

Fermentation at Germana is open-air, making use of naturally occurring yeasts. Interestingly, Germana also make use of ground yellow-maize to introduce wild, natural yeast strains to the ferment. This is a technique used for more than 500 years in the region. Fermentation time is between 14 and 24 hours. Cachaça is single distilled in a copper pot still (still using direct-fire heating – burning the crushed sugar cane) and in this case it was aged in a single French oak cask for 8 years. Distilled in 2014 and bottled in September 2022.

Our Tasting Notes

Nose: A mix of caramel plus floral notes at first. In fact there’s a lot of herbaceousness with grassy meadows and Jasmine and even unburnt tobacco in this nose. There’s a nice vanilla note that emphasizes the ex-bourbon maturation regime this has been through.

Palate: Rather light and (surprisingly) dry at first – but then flambéed tropical fruit with rich vanilla custard comes through in spades. Such classic American oak traits so well delivered! There’s even a touch of citrus there

Finish: The build up of the nose plus the palate of this lovely spirit is so well complimented by the finish here where a real sense of just-cut cane juice comes out. If you’ve ever chewed on a billet of cane nicked form a parked cane train on the side of a cane field you’ll know exactly what I mean.

Wow! I am just blown away by what is almost a textbook lesson in American Oak effect on a spirit. It’s an almost 50-50% mix of characteristics from the cane and the wood. This is a spirit easily sipped neat or over ice. You’ll be dissecting this with rum mates I promise. At 40.3%abv it’s not going to ‘sneak up on you’ like some ‘big hitters’. And if you’re partial to the odd Caipirinha, well this may just rock your world.
Sorry. Not Sorry.

From Germana

Germana is a handmade, artisanal Brazilian spirit made in the state of Minas Gerais. Produced from unrefined sugar cane juice and a little corn flour, it is regarded as one of the best quality Cachaças (pronounced ‘ka-shah-sa’) in this world. It is produced from single estate-grown sugarcane cut by hand using machetes and immediately transported to the distillery where it is processed (through the one and only electrical machine on the farm) to extract the juice. Fermentation is dependent on the weather as it is a natural process with natural yeasts mad from maize planted at the fazenda (Farm) and can take between 18 to 24 hours. The ‘sugarcane wine’ is then distilled in a copper still. At Germana, Cachaça is a way of life, a passion. Attention to detail is paramount and they are very proud also of their aged cachaças which can proudly belong to the category of Complex Matured Spirits Ò such as Cognac, Armagnac Whisky, Calvados, Rum Agricole etc.

About Germana

Over a century ago a man named Sergio Caetano started distilling cachaças outside the city of Belo Horizante in the rolling hills of Nova União. Caetano created Germana to showcase the unique flavours of south-western Brazil, in the heart of Minas Gerais.

In Portuguese, the name Germana means “something unmixed, pure and genuine.” Caetano picked this name for his cachaça and to honor the life of the famed nun, Sister Irma Germana. Sister Germana lived at the Sanctuary of the Serra da Piedade, southwest of Nova União. She was known to be a healer, who aided pilgrims and visitors with infusions made from cachaça and herbs, which she picked on the mountainside.

Germana begins with hand cut sugarcane, grown on the Caetano’s family farm free of chemicals, and pesticides. The cane is harvested on their farm, pressed the same day and left to ferment in open- air vessels for about 24 hours, depending on the ambient temperature. To aid the process of natural fermentation, Germana also adds a measure of toasted maize which is grown and ground locally. After fermentation, the wash is distilled in direct- fire copper pots stills using the pressed and dried sugarcane as fuel.