Grogue
Grogue, also spelt grogu, is the sugar-cane spirit of Cabo Verde, made by distilling naturally fermented cane juice. About 80 per cent of it is produced on Santo Antão, according to researchers writing in The Conversation, and Turismo de Cabo Verde, the national tourism website, calls it the most emblematic alcoholic drink of the islands. It is also the base of ponche, the local punch.
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Key facts
- Origin
- Cabo Verde, mainly Santo Antão and Santiago
- Main ingredient
- Sugar-cane juice, naturally fermented and distilled
- Legal basis
- Law of 2015, with further rules in 2018 (The Conversation)
- Stills
- 388 nationwide, 99 of them in Ribeira Grande, Santo Antão (IGAE data reported by Lusa)
- Cane-cutting season
- January to May under the law, as reported in 2023
- Used in
- Ponche, the local punch
What the law calls grogue
The Conversation’s authors, researchers at Kennesaw State University in the United States, report that laws passed in 2015 and 2018 set rules for grogue, banning the use of refined sugar, and define it as a sugar-cane spirit produced in Cabo Verde by distilling naturally fermented syrup pressed directly from Cabo Verdean cane. Lusa, the Portuguese news agency, adds that the 2015 law covers hygiene, environmental protection, public health and the rights of consumers and producers.
Wikipedia calls production artisanal and describes the cane being pressed in a trapiche, a cane press, and Expresso das Ilhas notes that the work starts in the field, where the cane is planted and has to be tended for a year.
Santo Antão and Santiago
Cane covers about 82 per cent of Santo Antão’s arable land and accounts for roughly 30 per cent of the island’s economic output, The Conversation reports. Cabo Verde has 388 stills, according to the economic inspectorate IGAE as reported by Lusa, and 99 of them are in the municipality of Ribeira Grande on Santo Antão. Smaller artisanal distilleries are more common on Santiago, The Conversation adds.
Cutting is regulated. In 2023, Lusa reported, the law allowed cane to be cut only between January and May across the archipelago, and producers on Santo Antão asked for earlier dates in the warmer zones, where the cane ripens in November and December. In November 2024 producers expected a good harvest after above-average rains, Lusa reported.
Cane, colonial history and regulation
The Conversation’s authors trace grogue’s story to the islands’ colonial past. After European mariners reached the archipelago between 1455 and 1461, Portuguese merchants had brought enslaved people from the African mainland by 1490 to grow crops, notably sugar cane, which largely failed on poor soil with little reliable rain. After independence in 1975, a 1993 subsidy on refined sugar led to grogue made from imported sugar, known as merdon or the grogue of democracy, which damaged the spirit’s quality and value.
A producers’ guild, the Confrérie du Grogue de Santo Antão, pressed from 2008 for stricter rules, and the 2015 law followed. The authors add that once the regulatory apparatus was established after the COVID-19 pandemic, many small distilleries were forced to stop producing because they could not meet the new fermentation, storage and labelling standards, and their owners sent their cane to larger processors or left the business.
In the glass and on the market
Turismo de Cabo Verde says grogue is the base for ponche, which comes in variations with honey, coffee and coconut, among others. Tourists and emigrants are the traditional buyers, Lusa reported in 2024, while a producers’ representative said domestic consumption had fallen since the pandemic because households were cutting spending. In 2017, certified production units made 1.7 million litres, according to IGAE data cited by Lusa.
Expresso das Ilhas advises visitors who buy grogue as a souvenir to beware of imitations, and Lusa notes that poor-quality grogue, sometimes made with harmful additives, has caused deaths and disability. In Emblem World, grogue sits in the Cabo Verde drink collection with ponche and Vinho do Fogo, where people discover and rate local drinks.
Sources
- The Conversation: Inside the grogue wars of Cabo Verde (Brandon D. Lundy, Mark Patterson, Monica Swahn and Nancy Hoalst-Pullen, 30 June 2023)
- Lusa, via Agroportal: Colheita generosa de cana em Cabo Verde perspetiva boa produção de grogue (21 November 2024)
- Lusa, via Agroportal: Produtores de Cabo Verde querem mudar lei para melhorar o grogue (5 October 2023)
- Turismo de Cabo Verde: Gastronomia em Cabo Verde: viaje pelos sabores das ilhas
- Expresso das Ilhas: Incmenda d’ Cabo Verde (23 November 2017)
- Wikipedia: Grogue
Checked by Emblem editorial on 17 October 2026.