Brazil's 3-ingredient national cocktail is the real drink of summer
Summer is about beautiful weather, creating glorious memories on vacation and enjoying the family you may not see as much during the hustle and bustle of the winter seasons. I agree with all this — but would also like to add finding the best cocktail to the list.
Over the past few months, I've been transitioning into being a wine guy, mainly for health reasons, but also because I don't enjoy hangovers. The problem is that being a wine guy isn't always fun during the summer; there's only so much chardonnay and pinot grigio and frosé one can enjoy before drinking themselves into a perpetual state of boredom. And nobody wants to be bored. We want people to have fun and get lost in new experiences or reconnect with the old ones that once brought us joy.
So, if you are like me and you appreciate a classic drink, then let me be the one to remind you of the caipirinha: a smooth cocktail that is refreshing, bitter-sweet, easy to make, and pairs well with summer.
I don't know why I always forget about caipirinhas–– after all, it's Brazil's national drink. I was first introduced to the cocktail at a small Brazilian steakhouse in D.C. that has since closed. The tiny restaurant was overflowing with flavor; everything on the menu was delicious, from the juicy picanha to the golden-brown pastels. But my favorite was the flavored caipirinhas.
The spot treated them like margaritas, in a way, by adding muddled peach, mango, passion fruit and strawberry. I was young and kind of pedestrian, so it wasn't strange to hear me saying, "Gee whiz bartender, I sure would enjoy the strawberry flavor!"
But a few years of fine dining helped dive into the true essence of the classic drink.
The drink originated sometime in the 1500s. Cachaça, also known as pinga which is similar to rum, is normally the main ingredient. Most rums are distilled from molasses, while cachaça is distilled from the fermented juice of sugar canes, giving it a completely different flavor. While I strongly recommend cachaça, rum can be used if that's all you have.
There's also a lot of takes on the drink floating around like the fruit concoctions I drank years ago. A bartender even slid me a caipiroska once, which features vodka instead of rum, but it didn't work for me as I don't dig super sweet gimlets. If you know like I know, sticking to classic caipirinha is the best option.
Caipirinhas are perfect when served in the classic form, and again–– they are so easy to make, that you could get your kid to whip it up for you. That's a joke, here's my recipe.
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