UPDATE 8/5/11: The folks at Leblon have assured me via Twitter that they weren’t in trouble.
They weren’t after us!! Someone’s wallet was stolen and the police happened to park near us. Cops love the Caipi-Mobile!
So that solves that mystery, but it raises another one: why/how are the police cool with this? We’re not complaining, we’re just curious. Also, Caipi-Mobile is a fantastic term.
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If you were on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg yesterday (and, let’s be real, if you’re a Remezcla reader in NY the chances are pretty high that you were) you may have noticed a rather interesting addition to the usual fleet of food trucks. Between six and seven yesterday evening, this bright green chariot offering refreshing caipirinhas in a bevy of delicious flavors to overheated passersby was apparently receiving some negative police attention. We can only guess as to the reasons, but we think it may have had something to do with carrying alcoholic beverages in a motor vehicle, and then selling them on the street to be consumed on the street, essentially making the truck a Public-Consumption-Mobile.
But, I mean, it could have been anything.
Turns out the people responsible for this truck are Leblon, a cachaça distillery in Brazil – which is technically the only place a cachaça distillery can be, but, then, that’s part of the problem. See, Leblon has begun the Legalize Cachaça campaign, which
…believe[s] to the core that Cachaça deserves to be recognized as just that, Cachaça, in the United States. We are out on the streets everyday gaining followers of the Legalize Cachaca movement. Each supporter that joins our cause brings us one step closer to having the U.S Government to formally accept Cachaça as its own appellation.
See, legally speaking, cachaça is classified as “Brazilian Rum” in the United States, which doesn’t fly with Brazilian purveyors of the spirit, because technically speaking, well, that’s not what it is.
We the People, in order to form a more perfect bar, seek to establish Cachaça as ‘Cachaça,’ Brazil’s Noblve [sic?] Spirit. We formally and necessarily declare that Cachaça is independent of, and therefore not, ‘Brazilian Rum.’ We make this declaration with no prejudice or malice towards Rum, nor to any other of our brethren spirits, such as Vodka, Tequila, or Gin.
Check out the video below about the campaign and the truck, and check out the website for some mixological methodology. As for this editor, though, as a Nuyorican all I can do is sip my Bacardi and say, “Mwahahahaha everything is going according to plan…” Then I steeple my fingers.