Cachacaria!

Move over feijuada-burrito, I've discovered my next entrepreneurial enterprise for when I get back to the states. I'm going to open a Cachaceria in Berkeley!

My future Organic Chachaceria in Berkeley

Cachaca is a strong alcohol (anywhere from 40-55% alcohol) that is brewed from fermented sugarcane juice. If you've ever had a caipirinha in the states, you've probably only had it with vodka, but the actual recipe calls for Pinga (another moniker for Cachaca), and is much more potent. Personally, it's an alcohol I've grown to love very quickly since I've been down here. Tim Maia once said that he couldn't start his day without a trifecta of substances: Marijuana, Cocaine, and Cachaca....ah, a man after my own heart.
This past long weekend, me and the de Sa clan went out to their house in Campos de Jordao, a mountain town about two hours south of Sao Paulo proper. It's a nice little place—think Breckenridge without snow—and somewhere inbetween the massive amounts of food consumed, bike rides through the forest preserve, and pure relaxation, we all managed to take a trip to a little Cachaceria one town over in Santo Antonio do Pinhal.
The drive there was great, flying through roads carved out of the jungle-esque forest, passing small houses with faux-colonial architecture, the surroundings becoming more and more pastoral the closer we got. It took about 20 minutes, and finally we pulled up at a small ranch, a quaint wooden building flanking us, and a stable of whinnying ponies to our left. A big wooden sign over the door read 'A Bodega'

Entering the building, you see a couple tables crowded with jugs of Cachaca. People were milling around with beers and cigarettes, everyone obviously a bit tipsy. There were bees everywhere, attracted to the honey this particular distillery uses extensively in their Cachacas. However, as Joao told me, you didn't need to worry about getting stung; the bees were basically drunk from the alcohol and mostly harmless. After he said this, I noticed they were flying in erratic circles, stopping occasionally to land in a spilled drop of sugarcane nectar and take a pull themselves. The fact that this particular place was swarming with bees made it seem that much more rustic and uncommercial.

Different kinds of chronic Cachaca

As I was still looking around in awe of all the bottles of fermenting pinga, someone handed me a shot glass. You were free to go from jug to jug, sampling whichever particular brew caught your fancy. There were so many, too. Tangerines, kiwis, anis, mint, honey, and even chocolate sat pickling in different clear bottles. I went around tasting, filling up my glass about an eighth of the way full for each different cachaca I tasted. After about 5 of these miniscule sips, I had a little buzz going on. Very strong stuff.

Whatever this was, it was legit.

After you taste as many cachacas as you want, you can go over to one of the guys that works there, and for the small price of 5 Reals (roughly 3 American dollars), he will fill up a small bottle with your desired Cachaca, hammer a cork into it, put it in a little package, and then you have a deliciously alcoholic souvenir to take home with you.

For an extra 5 R. he'll take you in the back and do this to your nether-regions.

Which Cachaca did I decide to take home with me? That's right....

The reason it's called 'Super Viagra' has something to do with one of the items it's fermented with that's supposedly an aphrodisiac...I'll have to get back to everyone on that. Needless to say, when I had it at the brewery, it did nothing for my penis. Equating liquor with sex is a long-standing tradition in advertising, but who knew it's made it all the way down to the artisanal level.
Until next time...
-JD

ps. There were some bottle trees in the back I couldn't figure out a good way to incorperate into this post. Here's a picture:

A Bottle Tree: There is not much more to say about this.

And there it is! Tchausino!

A Viking in Argentina

 So Buenos Aires was great. Lots of good wine, tango, cool places, great times with friends, and a steak so good it almost made me want to renounce my blasphemous ways and turn to God. I'll touch on all that later, but right now, I want to tell you about the night I met a Viking.
I had been staying with Norwegian friends, and it was one of our last nights in the city. "A friend of ours is leaving tomorrow, and he wants to get dinner with us before he goes," Adrian said,
"He's a true viking." he added, grinning.
I assumed he was kidding. The Norwegian sense of humor is an interesting one, and I won't pretend like I understood all of their jokes. However, I wasn't put off by the idea of eating at one of the apparently best Scandinavian restaurants in Argentina (Olsen), as it had mostly been beef and vino up to that point, and I was ready for a change. Around 9, I put on my thursday night best and we headed out the door to catch a cab over to the restaurant.
On the way we got a call. Olsen was too crowded, no one could get a table, so the restaurant was switched to some arab/mediterranean place in San Telmo. We arrived to find 6 Norwegian girls—all styled like they were getting back from a day out with their puritanical grandmothers at a feminist organic gardening expo in San Francisco (that is to say, they looked very...hip*)—with four empty seats set towards the end of the table. Me, Tonje, and Adrian all sat down, and I glanced at the menu as they greeted the other girls.
I'm not particularly fluent in spanish, and the menu was Mediterranean food en espanol, which was just a little bit confusing. I was trying to decide between the one dish towards the top of the menu that I had no idea what it was or the other dish at the bottom of the menu that I had no idea what it was, when I felt the table tremble a bit under my arms. It stopped for a minute, but then trembled again, more intense than before. Another pause, another episode of shaking. Like Jurassic Park, I watched my glass of beer quiver on the table. Silverware rattled against the plates. Soon our whole table was shaking violently. I turned to see the other customers looking around in a panic.
"Holy shit guys! Earthquake!" I shouted.
The Norwegians turned and smiled at me.
"No." one of them said, "Lars."
The booming became more intense and then stopped. The door opened, and a man as big as a bear—legs as wide as cinderblocks, arms as thick as tree-trunks, a huge beard covering his enormous, square face—squatted and contorted his body to fit through the door frame. He walked over to the table, each step making the entire restaurant convulse, and sat down next to me. The chair promptly broke, and he ripped a portion of the bar from the wall and seated himself on it.
"Hello friends." The restaurant suddenly felt small and his voice filled it like thunder.
"What will we eat?"

Lars, the Viking.

The waitress timidly walked over and took our orders. I had a schwarma. Lars ordered two of everything on the menu. It took me a minute to get over his enormous stature, but when I did, I poked him in the arm until he looked down at me.
"Oh ho ho...sorry little fellow. Didn't see you there." he said.
"That's okay, man. Just wanted to introduce myself...I'm John, friend of Adrian and Tonje."
"Pleasure to meet you, John. I am Lars, son of Steigandor, sailor of seas, conqueror of lands."
"Cool man. I've never met a real viking before...it's an honor."
"Well, my friend, even though your voice betrays that you are from an ignoble land—obviously unworthy of the attentions of a Norseman— it is my last night here in Argentina, so tonight we shall eat, drink, and be merry."
"Hey bro, that's cool. Just don't like, rape and pillage me, okay? Hahaha." I offered my hand to him, which looked like an infants in his palm, and which he crushed in a painful grip.
After we had eaten (and Lars had devoured every last scrap of food and beer in the entire restaurant), I conveniently didn't have to pull out my wallet, as Lars whipped out his broad-sword and beheaded the hostess for bringing us the check. I guess Vikings don't pay for their meals.
Outside, we smoked, and everyone agreed the next stop would be to check out a place an Argentinean architect I had sat next to on the plane had recommended: 878, apparently the best whiskey-bar in all of Buenos Aires. Tonje raised her hand to hail down a cab.
"A taxi? Nonsense!" Lars shouted, "I have my ship. We will sail to the bar!"
the question of how Lars intended to sail across the city on concrete answered itself as he whistled and hundreds of enslaved Portenos came rushing around the corner, carrying a large vessel with a dragon's head mast on their backs.
"Come aboard!" Lars yelled.

On our way to the whiskey bar.

878 was a really cool little place in Palermo. Outside, you'd have no idea it was a bar, just a small entrance with a discrete address above the door: 878 Thames. Inside, however, it was a very chic spot; dim lights, well-dressed Argentineans talking and laughing over their cocktails, couples fawning over one another in the penumbra of candle light. We seated ourselves at a table (Lar's chair broke again), and the waiter brought around menus printed on a board. Lars quickly scanned the Whiskey section.
"By Thor!" he exclaimed, "They have Caol Ila! It is the finest Scotch whiskey. I have not seen it in my travels since our raid on the Scottish armaments many moons ago! We must have some!"
We hailed down the waiter and ordered a couple 18 year aged Caol Ila scotches and several kegs of heineken for Lars. Mostly my experience with whiskey has been swilling Jack Daniels from the bottle....more to look like a bad-ass than for actual appreciation of taste, but like skin cancer, it grows on you. However, I might have to reconsider my whiskey of choice after drinking the good stuff. The first sip made me shudder, as well as warmed my entire stomach and throat on the way down. The second was much smoother, and by the time I finished my glass I had a nice little buzz going on, as well as a pleasant, oaky aftertaste in my mouth.

Lars on his 4th keg of beer.

 We were having a good time, drinking and talking, when I got a phone call. A girl I had met in my TFLA class, Cait, who now lives in Buenos Aires, was coming to meet up with us. Me and Lars went outside to smoke a cigarette. We were talking about his future travel plans when we heard a loud, obnoxious 'Heeeey!' ring out in the night like a drunken, sorority gunshot. Cait stumbled over and gave me a hug.
"Oh my gaaaaawd, Joooooohn! It's soo good to seeee you! This is my friend, Ken...he's from Berkeley too!" She slurred, deferring to a skinny, spanish-looking guy in a suit coat. He shook my hand and smiled,
"We split like, a whole bottle of rum." he said, sort of apologetically. Lars seemed uncomfortable.

Imagine this + that baby that was served alcohol at Applebees = What Cait looked like that night.

"Oh hey guys, this is my new friend, Lars." The once all-mighty and confident Viking seemed a bit unsure of the obscenely drunk American girl and her friend as he shook their hands. We went back inside, I introduced everyone and we sat back down at our table. Cait's overpoweringly loud voice seemed to make the relatively demure Norwegians tense up. Soon, Lars chugged the last of his keg of beer, said he had a long voyage to Chile tomorrow, and excused himself for the night. Tonje and Adrian, sensing that if a strong Nordic Warrior such as Lars was escaping they should probably follow suit, politely said they had Spanish Class early in the morning (they didn't) and took leave as well.
After the Norwegians left, Cait proceeded to—in the course of 20 minutes—briefly pass out, cry, scream "Imma fuck you up nigga!" to Ken when he told her to get it together (shes not black), and vomit profusely.
Charming.
Sensing this night was taking a turn for the worse, I attempted to lubricate myself into some sort of tranquility. I chugged the last of everyones drinks on the table and ended up vomiting in the bathroom too,
"For solidarity." I told Cait, retching next to her. From there, my enchantment with meeting a Viking wore off, the air started smelling like piss and garbage more than the exhilarating aroma of adventure, and the rest of the time was spent baby-sitting a stereotypically drunk girl until I finally caught a cab home around 4 am. At least Ken ended up being a pretty interesting guy—we talked philosophy—or else I probably would have taken a cue from Lars and cut someone's head off.
So that's it readers. My night with a Viking. He's off somewhere around Cape Horn now, plundering small towns, raping women and men alike, and probably having the time of his life.
Next time, I have a couple stories to tell. Which sounds better: More of Argentina (wine, steak, and tango), or my experience at an 8000-person formal graduation party this past saturday?
Let me know, and I will deliver.
Until then, Tchao Companieros!
-JD



*stupid