Novo Fogo Tanager Cachaca

Tanager was the first two-wood cachaça broadly available in the United States — and the wood in question is zebrawood. 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, hand-cut with a machete and pressed within hours, fermented into a low-strength cane wine, and pot-distilled in small batches. The Two-Wood Series — Tanager, Graciosa, and Colibri — exists because the Atlantic Forest has lost 88% of its 375 million acres, and Novo Fogo runs a reforestation project for the threatened native trees whose wood traditionally ages cachaça; each bottle funds it. Tanager is aged one year in repurposed American oak, then finished in casks of arariba — Brazilian zebrawood, a dense, striped hardwood — and bottled at 42% ABV (84 proof), non-chill filtered, USDA organic, named for the scarlet tanager bird. Zebrawood is nothing like oak or amburana: expect a nose of the Silver's grassy cane and banana with a red-fruit, faintly floral, spiced-tea note from the arariba, opening into a bright, vegetal palate where cane sweetness meets a dry, tannic, cinnamon-and-red-berry finish unlike anything in rum. Rum Ratings' drinkers give it the highest marks in the series. Honest note: an unusual, wood-forward cachaça for the curious — for a Caipirinha that tastes like the rainforest, a Batida, or neat. A bird, a tree, a bottle.

Buy Novo Fogo Tanager Cachaca online with fast shipping right to your door.