A Sweet Introduction to the Archipelago’s Other Spirit

Cape Verde may be best known for grogue — the fiery, unfiltered sugarcane spirit distilled on misty hillsides with little more than fire, copper, and patience. Still, its sweeter cousin, pontche, carries an altogether different reputation. Where grogue speaks of labour and resilience, pontche whispers of hospitality and slow afternoons in shaded kitchens, and of a culture that knows how to soften life’s sharper edges.

At its simplest, pontche is a liqueur: a blend of grogue, cane syrup or molasses, and a dash of citrus. However, as with many traditional recipes passed down informally across generations, the simplicity of the ingredients hides a deep cultural significance. Pontche is not a cocktail to be shaken and served in a stemmed glass — it is a cordial in the older sense of the word: warming, medicinal, familial. It appears at weddings and wakes, street stalls and supper tables. It is both everyday and ceremonial.

Despite its sweetness, pontche is not a drink for the uninitiated.

Its base spirit — grogue — is sharp and unpredictable. Artisanal grogue, made in the scattered trapiches of Santo Antão, Santiago, and São Nicolau, is a rustic distillate with alcohol levels anywhere from 38% to 60%. That grogue is blended with mel de cana, a dark molasses boiled from fresh sugarcane juice. Sometimes, especially in the coconut-rich southern islands, condensed milk or coconut milk is added to further soften the texture. The result is a thick, slow-moving liquid, rich and sticky, like a tropical amaro.

It’s not mass-produced in any industrial sense — most versions are made at home or by small, family-run distillers, their bottles unlabelled, the contents varying slightly from one village to the next. Yet it’s precisely this lack of standardisation that has allowed Pontche to remain a living drink, evolving and improvising, but never losing its sense of place.

Molasses, Memory and the Method of Making

Pontche begins, as grogue does, with the harvest of sugarcane — cana sacarina — from the steep terraced hillsides that define much of Cape Verde’s interior. The harvest season begins in January and peaks by June. It is an arduous job, often done with machetes in hand, sweat pooling beneath straw hats. Cane is then brought to the trapiche, where it is crushed — sometimes by oxen, increasingly by motorised mills — to extract a juice known locally as calda. That juice can be fermented and distilled to produce grogue, or boiled down into molasses.

It is this molasses, or mel, that forms the heart of pontche’s sweetness. Unlike cane syrup used in commercial liqueurs, Cape Verdean molasses is unrefined, dark, and intensely flavoured. Depending on how long it is boiled, the flavour can range from treacle and burnt sugar to grassy and slightly bitter. Once reduced, the molasses is cooled and mixed with grogue in varying proportions, depending on regional preference or household tradition.

Pontche Variations

Lime or lemon juice is sometimes added — not merely for flavour, but to bring balance and preserve the blend in warmer months. In more festive preparations, spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves are introduced, especially during holidays or special occasions. On São Vicente and Sal, tourist-facing adaptations have emerged: chocolate-flavoured pontche, passionfruit pontche, and the ever-popular ponche de coco — a creamy, coconut-milk version served ice-cold, often at beach bars. But the original remains unpretentious. It is stirred in pots, tasted with a wooden spoon, and bottled in repurposed glass jars.

In some homes, the recipe is not even written down — it is passed on by taste and feel, from parent to child, neighbour to neighbour. The result is not standardised — but it is consistent in its intent: to create something warm, familiar, and always, unmistakably Cape Verdean.

Pontche and the Soul of Cape Verdean Sociability

To understand pontche is to understand something about Cape Verdean time. The islands, despite their modernising cities and growing tourist presence, move to rhythms slower than the outside world. A visit isn’t a transaction; it’s a stay. A drink isn’t a rush, it’s a conversation. In this setting, pontche finds its true home — not as an export, not as a cocktail, but as a gesture. When offered a small glass of pontche, often warm and fragrant, it is not simply a treat; it is a welcome. It signals that you are no longer just a visitor, but someone who has been invited in. At funerals, it eases sorrow. At festivals, it softens edges. At quiet family meals, it reminds everyone at the table that life, however hard, is also sweet.

More Than Just The Taste

This social role has persisted despite the increasing commercialisation of other traditional foods and drinks. Grogu has been regulated, certified, and even exported. Pontche, by contrast, remains largely informal. It resists bottling. Its value is in presence. You drink it where you find it: in a clay cup from an older man in Ribeira Grande; poured from a soda bottle on a Sal beach; passed around in plastic glasses after church in São Nicolau. Even tourists — who may initially be drawn to its syrupy ease — quickly come to realise that it is not only about taste. Pontche connects people. The bottle is secondary to the hand offering it. And this is why attempts to industrialise or brand pontche have often felt forced. It is a drink embedded in relationships, not markets.

Between Past and Possibility

Yet as Cape Verde opens further to tourism and global trade, pontche stands at a quiet crossroads. There is growing interest in regional spirits across Europe and North America — from Brazilian cachaça to Martinican rhum agricole. Some believe pontche could join this revival of small-batch, terroir-driven liqueurs. Indeed, there have been efforts to standardise grogue production, introduce quality controls, and even design bottling for export. However, the tension remains: can a spirit so deeply rooted in community withstand industrial attention without losing its essence? Producers on Santo Antão and Santiago are wary. For many, pontche is not just a business opportunity — it is a memory, a livelihood, and a pride. To package it like limoncello or rum cream risks reducing it to a cliché.

Old Days, New Days

And yet, evolution is not inherently betrayal. The younger generation, many of whom straddle life between the islands and the diaspora in Europe, are finding ways to modernise respectfully. Some are testing consistent formulas, selling to travellers in small runs, or using pontche as a base in local cocktail menus. Others are simply making sure the tradition continues, regardless of whether it ever leaves the archipelago. For them, the act of making pontche — harvesting the cane, boiling the molasses, blending the grogue — is a form of storytelling. It links the past to the present, the land to the table. And even if the recipe changes slightly over time, the gesture remains the same: come in, sit down, have a glass. You are welcome.

In the end, perhaps pontche doesn’t need to be Cape Verde’s next significant export. Possibly its greatness lies in remaining what it has always been — a drink made not for shelves, but for people. A sweet, quiet ritual in a loud and hurried world. And that may be enough.

Bibliography

• Pontche Ark of Taste, Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity (link);
• Pontche, Taste Atlas (link);