Sour · 1918

Caipirinha

Cachaça, lime and sugar muddled straight into the glass.

Batch it

Specification

Cachaça	60 ml
Lime, cut in wedges	1 whole
White sugar	2 tsp
Crushed ice	to fill

Batch it for a party

Method

01Cut the lime into eighths and drop into a rocks glass.
02Add the sugar and press gently — bruise, don't pulverise.
03Pour in the cachaça and fill with crushed ice.
04Churn with a spoon until the outside of the glass frosts.

Walk through it step by step

Where it comes from

Brazil's national drink began as a folk remedy for the Spanish flu around 1918, with lime, garlic and honey. The garlic left, the cachaça stayed, and it became the country's signature.

If you change one thing: Muddle the peel too hard and you extract bitter white pith. Press just enough to release the oils in the skin, then stop.

More like this

AviationGin, maraschino and a few millilitres of violet. Pale sky-blue and utterly of its era. Last WordFour equal parts, one of them Chartreuse. It should not work, and it does. Corpse Reviver No. 2Equal parts, an absinthe rinse, and a warning printed in the original book.