Brazil , with an area of 8,515,767 km2, has a diverse geography, a complex sociocultural demography, and a long and complex history of producing alcoholic beverages. For thousands of years before the arrival of the Portuguese, the indigenous peoples of Brazil made drinks, such as cauim and caxiri, from fruits and roots that were chewed by women and left to ferment. These drinks were used for social and spiritual purposes, as well as to facilitate epic parties that led to exhaustion in a sonorous joy of tribal companionship.
The first Portuguese settlers arrived in 1500. In the sixteenth century, the Portuguese had a strong and longstanding tradition of wine drinking, and distilled brandy and fortified wines from the Atlantic islands, especially Madeira, were increasing in popularity. Once in contact with the Portuguese, the indigenous peoples of Brazil began to enjoy wine and distilled spirits that came from Europe and incorporate these imported drinks into their traditional alcohol-based ceremonies and cultural practices. These drinks were also commonly used as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations. The ancient “ethylic regime” of indigenous Brazilians—moderate, ritualized, and serving as a central element of their cultures—was virtually destroyed by imported alcoholic beverages and, later, by alcoholic drinks produced in Brazil from sugar cane juice and molasses. The sixteenth century also saw the arrival of enslaved Africans brought mainly from the Congo region and other parts of Central Africa. As with the Portuguese, enslaved peoples in Brazil came from societies with long traditions of alcohol use, especially fermented palm wine and grain-based beers. With the arrival of sugar cane agriculture and distillation technology, sugar cane–based alcoholic drinks, especially cachaça and aguardiente, were used to facilitate new social and spiritual alcohol-based practices that blended Portuguese, African, and indigenous traditions. See cachaça and aguardiente.
The first sugar plantation in Brazil was established in the Captaincy of São Vicente (near the present port of Santos), where Martim Afonso de Souza built the first sugar mills. The distillation of cachaça—today the most iconic Brazilian spirit—seems to have begun alongside the first sugar mills in the 1530s, in southern Brazil, between Paraty and São Paulo, with the help of Dutch and Portuguese investors. The word cachaça, however, is distinctly Brazilian and probably derives from the turbid, abundant foam formed by boiling sugar cane juice (known as cagassa). It is also possible that the name cachaça came from the designation of a lower-quality wine distillate of that time in Spain known as cachaza. Brazilian-made cachaça and the lower-grade aguardiente would eventually become central items of commerce in the colony’s extensive slave trade with Africa.
Today, cachaça is produced in nearly every Brazilian territory, commercially and privately and at both artisanal and industrial scales. Estimates for the number of distilleries in the country vary, but five thousand is an often-cited figure. While production has fallen somewhat in recent years, it is still in the region of a billion liters a year, making Brazil one of the world’s most important spirits producers.
In addition to cachaça, the production of fruit liquors has become common in Brazil. Distillers use native and exotic fruits, which they mix with cachaça or grain alcohol to extract various compounds from the pulps. As a legacy of Amerindian culture, the production of
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Vaissman, M. “Licit and Illicit Beverages in Brazil.” In Moonshine Markets: Issues in Unrecorded Alcohol Beverage Production and Consumption, ed. A. Haworth and R. Simpson, 84–99. New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2004.
By: Cauré Portugal