Novo Fogo Cachaça, an environmentally-minded, award-winning Brazilian cachaça handcrafted in small batches at the company’s carbon-negative, zero-waste distillery, today releases a new, high-proof silver cachaça in a 1-liter bottle format designed for the bar community. Novo Fogo Bar Strength Silver Cachaça has been reformulated to allow the service industry to find the elusive intersection between high-quality spirits and cocktail menu costs. The bottle redesign features a smaller, circular footprint, a taller neck and a slimmer midsection that fits ideally in the well and is easier to handle throughout busy shifts.
In addition to its functional benefits for bars and bartenders, Novo Fogo Bar Strength Cachaça was created to be foremost an exceptional distilled spirit with a minimal environmental impact, no matter how far it travels from Brazil to its final destination in a cocktail.
As the producer of the cachaça in the bottle, Novo Fogo is a carbon-negative company. Through its business practices of waste minimization, organic production, the ownership and management of forested land, a growing reforestation project for threatened tree species and the purchase of carbon offsets, Novo Fogo absorbs more CO2 than it emits. However other companies in a global supply chain are also necessary to bring this new product to the market, and designing Bar Strength Silver Cachaça offered Novo Fogo an opportunity to understand and take responsibility for the indirect carbon footprint of these upstream and downstream companies as well.
Calculations included activities by suppliers and distribution partners upstream and downstream of Novo Fogo’s own activities, such as:
- The production of the glass bottles, labels, corks, and cases
- Ocean and land freight
- Distributor warehouse utilities and fuel
- Sales and delivery activities
The results were unsurprising, as Novo Fogo’s activities generated only 21.5% of the total emissions created in the supply chain of this product. The remainder were emitted by its suppliers (45.9%) and distribution network (32.6%). Novo Fogo calculated these numbers and purchased carbon offsets to bring the net to neutral for the entire supply chain of the Bar Strength Cachaça, with detailed calculations included within each case. Ultimately, Bar Strength Cachaça is a bartender-friendly solution for making cocktails that are better for the earth.
Through Novo Fogo’s offsets provider partner, Native, the company’s carbon offset purchases financially support a project that provides water filters for 2,000 coffee-growing families in Honduras, eliminating their need to cut and burn trees for boiling water. This helps to preserve the fragile local forest habitat and thus satisfies two core tenets of Novo Fogo’s sustainability foundation: carbon management and forest preservation.
Novo Fogo contributes $3 per case of all of all its bottle sales to the brand’s Un-Endangered Forest project, a program that works to remove 36 species of native Brazilian trees from the threatened list. Each bottle is made from recycled glass and the neck wrap is repurposed from plastic collected from the streets of São Paulo, Brazil.
The higher-proof expression presents at 43% ABV in the bottle, after resting in chemically-inert stainless steel tanks for one year. The resulting effect of intensified tropical fruit flavors takes the leading role in a broad range of cocktails, from sours to Tiki drinks and twists on classics.
Design features:
The bottle measures 3.7” in diameter, leading to a smaller footprint in the bar well
The longer neck improves grip and wrist torque to balance extra weight
The small circumference and curvy shape of mid-level grip reduces hand strain
Economic features:
43% ABV + 1 liter volume = 22 drinks per bottle (1.5 oz. drink)
Average account cost per bottle = $24
Cost per ounce = $0.71
Cost per cocktail = $1.06
Tasting notes: banana, lime blossoms, passion fruit, sweet red peppers, sea salt, green grass.
“We designed this product with bartenders in mind, as they value efficiency, knowledge, and leadership,” said Dragos Axinte, CEO of Novo Fogo Cachaça. “The new Silver 1-liter bottle offers the ergonomics and economics to become a bartender’s favorite, while also serving as a flagbearer of cleaner business practices in our industry.”
The Bar Strength 1-liter bottle is distributed nationally by Novo Fogo’s distribution partner, 375 Park Avenue Spirits, a division of The Sazerac Company. It is available primarily through major distributors for on-premise purchase and in select liquor stores nationwide for the average wholesale cost of $24.
