Cocktail recipe
Caipirinha
Brazil in a glass: vivid lime oil, grassy cane spirit and just enough sugar to make them sing.
Ingredients
- 60 ml (2 oz) unaged cachaça
- 1 medium lime (about 70 g), cut into 8 wedges; remove central white pith
- 12 g (about 3 tsp) superfine sugar
- Garnish: no additional garnish
Preparation
Place the lime wedges and sugar in a sturdy rocks glass. Press gently with a muddler four or five times, extracting juice and fragrant peel oil without grinding the bitter pith. Add cachaça and stir until the sugar starts to dissolve. Pack with cracked ice, lift the fruit through the drink once, and serve immediately.
Glassware
Double rocks glass, cracked or cubed ice
History
The Caipirinha is a Brazilian cachaça-and-lime drink associated with the countryside of São Paulo. Its exact inventor is unknown. One widely repeated explanation links it to a lime, honey, garlic and cachaça remedy during the 1918 influenza pandemic; another invokes earlier sailors' citrus drinks. Neither story proves the birth of today's sugar-and-lime cocktail. Cachaça, distilled from fresh sugarcane juice, distinguishes it from a rum-based Caipiríssima. Brazilian service often favours cubed or cracked ice rather than the crushed ice common in overseas bars.
Mixology View
A Caipirinha should feel rustic but never careless. Gentle muddling protects the lime's perfume; unaged cachaça gives the drink its unmistakably Brazilian voice.