What is International Cachaca Day?
Every year on June 12th, International Cachaca Day honors the Brazilian-made drink cachaça. It's also a day to learn more about this distilled spirit made exclusively in Brazil..
Cachaca is made from fresh sugarcane juice. The clear liquor is spicy, sweet, and fruity. It is Brazil's most popular drink, and distillers can only make it in this South American nation by law. be used to make Brazil's national cocktail, caipirinha, from Cachaca.
In the 1500s, Portuguese settlers introduced sugar cane to Brazil, and Brazilians first began making cachaça in the 1500s. on the sugarcane plantations. Many African slaves drank cachaça as they worked on the sugarcane plantations. The drink helped reduce their pain and gave them a boost of energy. The working class and wealthy also acquired a taste for the drink.
The drink had become so popular around 1630 that Portuguese kings began to feel threatened by the drink. The Portuguese emperors would have preferred Brazilians to drink bagaceira, which was a Portuguese grape brandy. It became unlawful for the Portuguese Colony of Brazil to produce, export, and sell cachaça in 1635. This prohibition on cachaca led to the company's market going underground. In 1660, however, some tenacious cachaça producers took over Rio de Janeiro's city government in Rio de Janeiro. The Cachaca Revolt took place this year. The Royal Order legalized cachaça on September 13, 1661, thanks in large part to this uprising. 1661
Brazil's Empire declared independence from Brazil on September 7th, 1822, 1822. This greatly contributed to the rise of the cachaça market.. Every year, 85 million cases of cachaça are consumed around the world. The United States, Paraguay, Germany, France, and Portugal are the top export markets for the drink.
