Cachaça D’Salinas Reserva Especial

Salinas, a relatively small city in Minas Gerais is well known for its flourishing cachaça production.  Especially the use of balsam and umburana  wood for maturation is a signature of the town, which also hosts a cachaça museum.

Let’s try one of the lesser known umburana matured cachaças from cachaça-capital.

The Cachaça: D’Salinas Reserva Especial
Origin: Salinas – MG
Fermentation : Fuba de Milho
Distilled : column still – ca 2012
Bottled : ca 2014
Maturation: Umburana – 2 years old
ABV: 40

The Nose: The aroma is pleasant, round and soft, with a more delicate vegetal sugarcane touch and a hint of cinnamon. Also wet hay and soft herbal notes. The sugarcane juice is unlike most cachaças rather hidden, but also the umburana influence is very discrete. I guess the original spirit is already very soft itself.  After evaporation of the alcohol we have some new leather, and some toasted grains – strangely enough. Due to the fermentation with cornflower (fuba de milho) maybe?

The Taste: Again very soft without any alcohol bite. A nice sweet note and again a rather subtle vegetal side. Soft without being too flat – although the 40 abv might be the limit. I would love to try this cachaça at let’s say 42 or 44 % ! Tasty and easy going, but without evolution.

The Finish: Soft cinnamon slowly fading away. The sweet touch stays until the end of this medium long finish. At the very end some light metallic notes that blend perfectly in.

Our Score : *** – a very nice cachaça with only subtle umburana notes. But it lacks evolution – it gets a bit boring.

Borgoe Extra

Suriname Alcoholic Beverages N.V. or SAB in short was founded in 1966 and is today one of the leading companies in the small republic of Suriname. They are mostly famous for their rum ‘Borgoe’. But the history of the rum and company dates back to 1882 when the sugar estate Marienburg was founded. Today, SAB produces rum made from molasses and distilled in 3 column stills. The company also owns a pot still for the production of more heavy rums and liquors.

Under the Borgoe label, SAB bottles a Borgoe ’82, Borgoe Extra, Borgoe Vintage (5 yo), Borgoe 8 yo and Borgoe 15 yo. Today we try the more basic Borgoe Extra.

The Rum: Borgoe Extra
Origin: Suriname
Distilled: n.i. – blend of different ages matured in oak
Bottled: ca 2016
ABV: 40%

The Borgoe extra is placed in the market as a mixer more than as a sipper. It should be an ‘extra smooth’ rum thanks to a system of double filtration through charcoal. Do we have the Jack Daniel’s of rum here?

The Nose: loads of caramel with firm hints of vanilla. The nose reveals subtle herbs and fine wood influences. But also a bit of a stranger aroma that hangs between metallic and mineral. In short, the nose is soft, round and rather elegant. After 10-15 minutes it reveals softer licorice and a bit of tangerine.

The Taste: rather sweet with firm caramel. Smooth, round but maybe a bit flat. Again a little fruitiness (oranges).

The Finish: rather short and thin, with a short soft bitter woodiness at the end.

Our Score: *** . This is OK as a sipper, no off-notes, no aggressivity. But it indeed makes an excellent mixer. Try your next Dark and Stormy with Borgoe and you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Thank you Dominiek for the bottle!