Novo Fogo Barrel-Aged Cachaca

Barrel-Aged is Novo Fogo's American-oak cachaça — the most rum-like spirit The Lone Caner had ever tasted from Brazil, which he meant as description rather than praise. Novo Fogo — "new fire" — was founded in 2004 in Morretes, in the coastal Atlantic rainforest of Paraná state in southern Brazil, and owns its own distillery: organic estate sugarcane, pressed within a day, fermented into a low-strength cane wine, and pot-distilled in small batches. Barrel-Aged is that spirit matured two to three years in charred ex-bourbon American oak — rather than the amburana and other native woods that give traditional cachaça its exotic edge, which also spares Brazil's endangered hardwoods — and bottled at 40% ABV, USDA organic. The Lone Caner found vanilla, minerals, and cold campfire ash mingling with caramel, brown sugar, and soft fruit, a faint brine and olive from the pot-still cane wash, and a tasty, interesting palate — with the honest caveat that the oak muted the wildness he loved in the Chameleon, and the cheaper bottle got his money. Rum Ratings' drinkers found it subdued, the one to hand someone who can't stand cachaça's usual in-your-face grass, and later discovered tropical-fruit notes that made a great frozen punch. Expect a gentle, oaked cane spirit with vanilla, caramel, and light citrus. Honest note: the polished, approachable Novo Fogo — for a cachaça Old Fashioned or a first aged cachaça; the Two-Wood series is where the wild stuff lives.

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