Feature Photo: Courtesy

Ypióca: the 1846 cachaça from Ceará that got a straw jacket

Created by a Portuguese immigrant in Maranguape, the brand passed through four generations of the Telles family before being sold to Diageo for R$900 million

By Bebidário Newsroom Bebidário Team Oct 28, 2026 4 min read

The story of Ypióca begins with an immigrant. The Portuguese Dario Telles de Menezes arrived in Ceará in 1843 and settled on a property between the Maranguape and Aratanha ranges, near Fortaleza, according to Diário do Pará, which cites Mapa da Cachaça. He brought an old still and began producing aguardente, the drink's original name, Brazzil magazine reports. The brand uses 1846 as its founding year, when the first batch came out. The name, of Tupi origin, means purple earth, according to Diário do Pará.

From donkey's back to bottle

At first, the cachaça was sold in wooden barrels carried on donkeys' backs, according to Brazzil. The bottle came with the second generation: his son Dario Borges Telles took over in 1895 and began bottling the spirit by hand. After his death, his widow, Eugênia Menescal Campos, ran the company for 13 years, according to Diário do Pará.

The trademark every Brazilian recognizes appeared in 1924, when the third generation, with Paulo Campos Telles, took over the business. That year, the bottles got a woven jacket of carnauba straw, designed to protect them on the dirt roads of the time, according to Diário do Pará. The straw work provided jobs for artisans in the region. In 1931, production reached 120,000 liters, and in 1968 Ypióca made its first export, to Germany. The fourth generation, with Everardo Ferreira Telles, took over from 1970.

The museum and the cask

The mansion of the first distillery, in Maranguape, became the Museu da Cachaça, with maps, documents, machinery and old bottles. The museum holds what it describes as the world's largest wooden cask, certified by Guinness, according to Brazzil. According to Diário do Pará, the venue now appears as closed.

The sale to Diageo

On May 28, 2012, Diageo, owner of Johnnie Walker and Smirnoff, announced the purchase of the brand for R$900 million in cash. The deal included a distillery in Paraipaba (Ceará), a bottling plant in Fortaleza and a warehouse in Guarulhos (São Paulo). At the time, Ypióca had about 8% of the cachaça market, with 6.6 million 9-liter cases, and was the category's second-largest brand by value.