Luke McKinley first learned about cachaça while managing a small bar in Seattle. He liked the Brazilian beverage so much that he decided that he was going to share it with the world.
Here’s the story: Novo Fogo founder Dragos Axinte called him up one day and said he wants to teach him how to make a bright, sweet, and tarty cocktail. He mixed cachaça— Brazil’s national spirit, which is malty and vanilla toffee-flavored—with lime and shook it up with ice.
“That was my intro into Novo Fogo,” says McKinley, a WeWork South Lake Union member. “Over the following years, he and I did cocktail parties where we paired Novo Fogo cocktails with food, and one thing led to another.”
Before long, McKinley became Novo Fogo’s first employee. Since cachaça (pronounced ka-SHAH-sah) isn’t well-known in the U.S.—though it’s becoming increasingly popular—McKinley’s job as creative director introduce the spirit at festivals in places like Portland and New Orleans and to diners at fancy restaurants like ABC Cocina in New York City.
It turns out that Novo Fogo is an eco-friendly product. Sugar cane is extracted by hand using machetes—not by destroying huge swaths of rainforest. Then it’s taken to a distillery where it’s fermented into a low-alcohol wine.
“Our distillery is built into the slope of a mountain, so we don’t generate garbage,” McKinley says. “We take the stalks of sugar cane and put it through a press. When it’s dried, we burn that in the furnace to create heat that fires up the stove to distill cachaça.”
Then the distilled spirit is placed in stainless steel tanks. Depending on the type of barrel, you could get an earthy, spicy profile from the American oak and Brazilian zebrawood. You can also get unique tasting single barrels, which have been tested by Novo Fogo’s master distiller, Agenor Maccari, Jr., who ages barrels for five to seven years.
“The single barrels are precious,” McKinley says. “You’re tasting one moment in time that will never be recreated. One barrel might yield a total of 240 bottles of cachaça.”
The people who make Novo Fogo—the ones who do everything from planting the sugarcane to corking the bottles—are extremely proud of their product. They even sign their initials on the bottles before they’re shipped off to destinations in the U.S., Canada, and Australia.
With a background in the hospitality industry, McKinley knows how to describe the exotic flavors in every bottle of Novo Fogo.
“You taste the fresh flavors from the jungle,” McKinley says. “It’s a bit of banana from the banana trees that are 10 feet from the sugar cane. You taste the savory finish to it. Then, the distillery is located in Serra do Mar, where the mountain ranges come down into the ocean, and it’s got the sea salty ocean mist to it. You can taste salt in the cachaça.”
Photos: Ana Raab