Drink Well - Novo Fogo Bar Strength Silver Cachaça

“We designed this product with bartenders in mind, as they value efficiency, knowledge, and leadership.”

-DRAGOS AXINTE, CEO OF NOVO FOGO

POSITIVELY BRAZIL

Bartenders Embrace an Agricultural Spirit

By Joseph Luparello

With nearly 500 years of tradition and history as Brazil’s national spirit, the cachaça category has developed into a hugely diverse constellation of producers throughout the country.

Novo Fogo Cachaça is the ecologically sound, award-winning spirit handcrafted in small batches at the company’s carbon negative, zero-waste distillery. Novo Fogo produces USDA-certified 100% organic cachaças at its distillery in the small town of Morretes and is one of the true passionate advocates for sustainable practices in the spirits industry. The distillery and sugarcane fields are situated in the heart of the largest protected patch of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, where the coastal mountains meet the ocean. Novo Fogo distills fresh sugarcane juice into rum’s older cousin using methods that exercise environmental and human sustainability first and foremost.

“Cachaça is an agricultural spirit in that it is produced from the juice of an unprocessed plant,” says Dragos Axinte, CEO of Novo Fogo Cachaça. When you taste cachaça, you’ll experience flavors that emanate from the place where the sugarcane was cultivated, without any additives or cooking or alteration. It tastes raw and alive, like other plant-based spirits (e.g., agave spirits, unaged brandies like pisco and singani, or eaux de vie). And for bartenders who care about beverage production as a matter of sustainability, the farming and cultivation methods for sugarcane make a big impact for the earth and on the final distillate.”

The newest addition to the collection is a highproof, 43% ABV, silver cachaça, delivered in a one-liter bottle designed specifically for the bar community. Novo Fogo Bar Strength Silver Cachaça has been reformulated to let the service industry discover the rare intersection between high-quality spirits and cocktail menu costs. The bottle re-design features a smaller, circular footprint, taller neck, and a slimmer midsection that fits ideally in the well and is easier to handle throughout busy shifts.

“We designed this product with bartenders in mind, as they value efficiency, knowledge, and leadership,” notes Axinte. “The new Silver 1-liter bottle offers the ergonomics and economics to become a bartender’s favorite, while also serving as a flagbearer of cleaner business practices in our industry.”

One year of rest in chemically-inert stainless steel tanks yield the intensified tropical fruit flavors of banana, lime blossoms, and passion fruit. These characteristics valiantly take the lead role in a broad range of cocktails, from sours to tiki drinks, and twists on classics.

In addition to its practical benefits for bars and bartenders, Novo Fogo Bar Strength Cachaça is meant to be an exceptional distilled spirit with a minimal environmental impact, regardless of how far it travels from Brazil to its destination in a cocktail.

Batida Tropicalia

Created by Navy Strength, Seattle

INGREDIENTS

1 oz cacao-infused Novo Fogo Bar Strength Cachaca ½ oz Select Aperitivo 1 ½ oz lime juice ½ oz strawberry syrup ½ oz coconut cream ½ oz condensed milk

PREPARATION

Blend with ice and garnish with a bouquet of fresh mint and a lime wheel.

Considering its practices of waste minimization, organic production, management of forested land, and the purchase of carbon offsets, it’s clear to see Novo Fogo absorbs more CO2 than they emit. The company also keeps the global supply chain in mind, noting how other companies are instrumental to bringing its new product to the market. Designing Bar Strength Silver Cachaça offered Novo Fogo an opportunity to understand and take responsibility for the indirect carbon footprint of these upstream and downstream companies as well.

Through Novo Fogo’s offsets provider partner, Native, the company’s carbon offset purchases financially support a project that provides water filters for 2,000 coffee-growing families in Honduras, eliminating their need to cut and burn trees for boiling water. This helps preserve the fragile local forest habitat, which satisfies two key values of Novo Fogo’s sustainability foundation: carbon management and forest preservation.

We’re trying to be leaders in the cachaça category by growing it responsibly,” shares Axinte. “For us, that means farming organically and using production methods that aren’t detrimental to the environment, treating our community and employees well, reducing and offsetting our entire business’s carbon emissions, and being hyper-focused on sourcing Brazilian wood barrels from legal and sustainable sources. In all these areas, cachaça has the potential to be an emissary of doing business positively Brazil, by producing delicious things while taking care of people and prioritizing environmental conservation. Just a fraction of Brazil’s cachaça production is exported from the country, so there is a lot of room for more people outside Brazil to discover and fall in love with it!”