Mato Dentro

My name is Rudilson Manuel Gomes and I am a grog maker. It is a distillate obtained from fermented sugar cane must, which is harvested when the cane is in flower. I work together with my uncle. In the past, and some still do, the canes were squeezed thanks to the strength of the oxen, which, turning the rollers, moved the trapiche until the juice came out and then ended up in the still. Today we don't need oxen here, we use electric machines and, little by little, We are expanding production. I go you tell the process.

First we insert the barrel into the rollers, the kalda (juice) flows into the tank. It is fermented in wooden barrels for around five days and then poured into the copper still, the lambiki , over the stone oven that we supply with sugar cane and banana leaves: the distillation lasts around thirty minutes, a maximum of one hour. My uncle and I intend, next year, to sell aged Grog too, not just the classic. We are proud to produce a drink as typical and traditional as this, and to be able to do so in and for our community even more so: telling the story of a culture also means this, tasting its typical products, just like our Grog.