Cachaça: Paraty's other gold
For a stretch of the colonial era, 'paraty' wasn't just a town — it was a common word for cachaça itself, the way 'champagne' means the wine. The bay shipped barrels of sugar-cane spirit along with Minas gold, and small distilleries called alambiques have worked these hills ever since. Several still distill the old way, and they welcome visitors.
A short history
Cachaça is Brazil's native spirit, distilled from fresh-pressed sugar-cane juice (unlike most rum, which starts from molasses). Paraty's plantations and its port made it a distilling center from the 1600s on; at the trade's height the town had well over a hundred stills, and barrels of 'paraty' traveled wherever Brazilian ships did. The gold faded, the railway and highway bypassed the town, but a handful of family alambiques kept the craft alive — and Paraty's name is now a protected geographical indication for cachaça, one of the first in Brazil.
What an alambique visit looks like
The working distilleries sit mostly along and off the Estrada Paraty-Cunha, the mountain road behind town, surrounded by their own cane fields. A visit is informal: someone walks you past the cane press, the fermentation vats and the copper pot still, explains the cuts (head, heart, tail — only the heart gets bottled), and then you taste. Expect white (unaged) cachaça, wood-aged expressions golden from Brazilian timbers like amburana and jequitibá, and usually a gabriela — cachaça mellowed with cinnamon and clove — plus jars of artisanal liqueurs.
How to visit
- Jeep tour (recommended). The classic Paraty jeep day strings two or three distilleries together with the waterfalls on the same road. Nobody has to drive, which you'll appreciate by the third tasting. Book like any tour.
- Self-drive. Fine if you have a designated driver; distilleries are signposted from the road and most welcome drop-ins in visiting hours.
- In town. Shops and bars in the historic center stock the local producers and pour flights — a rainy-day alternative that skips the road entirely.
Tasting notes for newcomers
Good artisanal cachaça is nothing like the industrial spirit in a supermarket caipirinha. Taste the white ones first: fresh cane, grass, banana. Then the aged: vanilla and spice from amburana is the local signature. Buy bottles at the source — they're inexpensive for the quality, and several producers' output barely leaves the region. And learn the local cocktail vocabulary: a caipirinha made with lime is the baseline, but here they'll make it with cambuci, cajá or whatever fruit is ripe.
The festival
Every August the town throws the Festival da Cachaça, Cultura e Sabores de Paraty — producers, food stalls and live music. If your dates are flexible it's a great excuse; see the festivals guide.
The distillery road and its waterfalls are pinned on the satellite map. Taste in the afternoon, dinner in the historic center, and a slow morning by the pool to follow — that's the correct sequence.