Sour · Anytime · Summer

Caipirinha

Lime wedges and sugar muddled in the glass, cachaça poured straight over cracked ice. Brazil's national drink: sharp, sweet, unfussy.

Base: Cachaça
Glass: Double old fashioned glass
Method: Muddle
Strength: 26% ABV

Ingredients

60 mlCachaça3 swaps
White rummedium
Cleaner, less grassy — makes a Caipirissima
Vodkamedium
Clean and neutral — makes a Caipiroska
Licor Beirãolow
Herbal and sweet — makes a Caipirão
1 wholeLime1 swap
Lemon cut into wedgesmedium
Less floral and more tart; muddle the same way
4 tspWhite Cane Sugar

How to make

Technique

Muddle · 10–15s

Muddling presses the oils and juice out of the fruit or herbs.

Place lime and sugar into a double old fashioned glass and muddle gently.
Fill the glass with cracked ice and add Cachaça.
Stir gently to involve ingredients.

Serve

Glass

Double old fashioned glassAlso fine: Old fashioned glass, Rocks glass, Tumbler

Garnish

Lime wedgeSqueeze it over the drink before dropping it in.

Taste & nutrition

26%ABV

190kcal

1.42Drinks

StrengthBoozy

Sweet to dryBalanced

Estimated from ingredient amounts and assumed ABVs — not a lab measurement.

Good to know

Use freshly squeezed juice — bottled tastes flat.

History

Year19th century

PlaceBrazil

Created byUnknown (folk origin)

Brazil's national cocktail muddles cachaça with lime and sugar over ice, its name translating roughly as "little country girl." It rose from the sugarcane countryside of São Paulo state, with folk tales tying it to sailors, farm workers and even a flu remedy. Cachaça, distilled from fresh cane juice, is the everyday spirit of Brazil, which kept the drink cheap and popular. Premium cachaças have since lifted it onto the world stage.

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