Velho Barreiro Gold Cachaca

Velho Barreiro Gold, the black-label bottling launched in 1975, is the aged version of one of Brazil's biggest cachaça brands, made by Indústrias Reunidas de Bebidas Tatuzinho 3 Fazendas in São Paulo state, a company whose roots go back to 1909 and the Tatuzinho sugarcane spirit. Like all cachaça it's distilled from fermented fresh sugarcane juice rather than molasses, which gives it the grassy, green-cane character that separates it from rum. Where the standard yellow-label Velho Barreiro is bottled clear, the Gold is matured a full three years in large vats of jequitibá rosa, a native Brazilian hardwood, which gives it its golden color and rounds off the spirit's edges without the heavy vanilla and caramel that oak would impose. It's bottled at 39% ABV (78 proof) in a one-liter bottle. The producer describes sugarcane juice, banana, and peach on the nose and palate and calls it very soft, mild, and smooth, and in Brazil it's often poured neat as a digestif after a meal. Because the wood is so restrained it still works in cocktails without steamrolling the other ingredients: it makes a rounder, slightly richer Caipirinha than the yellow label.

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