WAKIZA CAJU: the story of the world's first cashew cream liqueur

Hundreds of whisky creams, chocolate creams, and almond creams exist. Before WAKIZA CAJU, there was no commercialized cashew cream liqueur anywhere in the world. Here's how a fruit long familiar in Benin became an entirely new spirits category.

Cashew holds a special place in West African economies and culture. Benin, like several of its neighbors, is a recognized producer — yet the cashew industry remains almost exclusively focused on exporting the raw nut, processed elsewhere, valued elsewhere.

A simple question, never asked

At WINEX, we asked ourselves a question that seems obvious once stated, but that no one had ever turned into a finished product: what if, instead of selling only the raw nut, we valued cashew in a cream liqueur, the way it's been done for decades with whisky, almond, or coconut?

There was no reference to follow, no competitor to study, no established manufacturing process. Everything had to be built from scratch: the texture, the balance between the cashew's natural richness and sweetness, the product's stability in the bottle, and of course the taste — recognizable, indulgent, true to the fruit.

An innovation that remains an innovation

WAKIZA CAJU remains, to this day, a unique reference in the spirits market. That's not a marketing claim — it's a verifiable fact. We created a product category that didn't exist, from a raw material West Africa has known for generations but that no one had dared transform this way.

This choice also makes economic sense. Every bottle of WAKIZA CAJU sold values cashew far beyond its price as an exported raw commodity. That is exactly the logic we want to push further: transform more in Benin, export finished products rather than raw materials.

What this means for the future

WAKIZA CAJU taught us something essential: innovation in spirits doesn't necessarily come from an exotic imported ingredient, but sometimes from a fresh look at a raw material everyone already knows. This is the philosophy we keep applying to every new reference, at WAKIZA as much as at OJU.