Caipirinha

Edited and reprinted from an old NY Times Article:

No visit to Rio, or anywhere else in Brazil, would be complete without sampling the native drink; caipirinha

The caipirinha began as a peasant's drink; the name is derived from the word caipira, which means hayseed or hick or rube. It is based on a clear spirit called cachaça (pronounced kah-SHAH-sah), which is a rustic relative of rum, distilled directly from the juice of sugar cane. Most rums, by contrast, are produced from molasses, a byproduct of sugar refining.
But today caipirinhas are every bit as popular with the sleek sophisticates of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro as with the hard- drinking habitués of rural
botequims, or outdoor bars. In the cocktail lounge of the snazzy JW Marriott Hotel in Rio, they are the standard tipple, along with variants called caipiroskas (made with vodka) and caipirissimas (with rum).
They have in fact become one of Brazil's major contributions to world culture, along with balletic soccer stars, the samba, propulsive popular music and Gisele Bundchen. Caipirinhas are now hot stuff in Tokyo, Berlin and Sydney, as well as in hip bars in New York, Miami and Los Angeles. Cafe Atlantico and Coco Loco, hot Latin hangouts in Washington, dispense dozens a night. In London's Soho in the spring, they were one of the big sellers, right up there with
rhubarb martinis.
LIKE all really superior cocktails, including martinis and margaritas, caipirinhas are much more than the sum of their parts. Making them is simple, although it requires a certain attention to detail. You start with limes, as thin-skinned as possible, and before cutting into them, roll them briskly on a board with the palm of your hand. That helps to release the juices.
Then trim the ends, cut the limes into quarters lengthwise and remove the pithy core from the pieces. Put four to six segments into a heavy-bottomed glass —
preferably a double old-fashioned glass — and sprinkle them with granulated sugar — superfine, if available, because it dissolves more rapidly. A tablespoon or so should do it; the trick is to balance the sweetness of
the sugar and the acidity of the limes. Experiment with the proportions.
Next comes the crucial step: thorough grinding of the sugar and the lime with a pestle to release the oils in the skin as well as the juice in the flesh of the fruit. Brazilian bartenders use a long-stem pestle, but the stubbier sort commonly found in American bars (and bartenders' supply houses) will do nearly as well. Grind away for at least two or three minutes; the best pros in Rio, I found, keep at it for five minutes.
Finally, fill the glass with ice cubes and cachaça. You will be rewarded at once with a distinctive, irresistible aroma, in which the tart, fruity smell of the citrus mingles with the slightly resinous cachaça.
As for the flavor, well, take a taste and I'll bet you say "aaaah" even if you're a million miles from Rio's beaches and all the young and tan and tall and lovely creatures who spend most of their lives frolicking there.
The better the cachaça, of course, the better the caipirinha. As is the case with many spirits, the best cachaça is made in small batches by artisanal distillers, using the same techniques their predecessors used in early colonial days, when cachaça played a role in the slave trade. The most prized stuff, with the smoothest and most complex taste, is made in pot stills or alembics much like those used for centuries in Cognac and Scotland.
There are 4,000 to 5,000 producers, most of them tiny. But two brands dominate the market here and in the United States: 51 and Pitu, both made in industrial quantities in column stills, both 43 percent alcohol or 86 proof. Overseas sales are still relatively tiny. But since the government began an aggressive export campaign several years ago, sensing that it might have another tequila on its hands, they have grown more than 82 percent.
Cachaça 51 is made in a large factory at Pirássununga, a city of 60,000, about 285 miles west of São Paulo, which is surrounded by sugar cane fields. In 2000, according to the trade publication Impact, it ranked fourth in case volume among the largest- selling liquor brands in the world (although it stood only
27th in retail value in dollars). Its sales of 25 million cases were only half those of Stolichnaya vodka, the leader, but four times those, for example, of the much more widely known J&B Scotch. Such is the intense devotion of Brazil's 175 million people to cachaça and the caipirinha.
"This country couldn't run without caipirinhas," commented a consequential government figure in Brasília, the capital, who would prefered not to be quoted by name.
A thirsty man or woman need not walk far in Rio to find a good caipirinha. All the hotels make it a point to serve the real thing, and the legendary Copacabana Palace serves more than 200 a night. Restaurants sometimes put a twist on the traditional recipe, like using yellow Persian Limes or confectionary sugar.
In Santa Teresa, the slightly bohemian hillside neighborhood reached by a tramway, a visitor can migrate from bar to bar, drinking first-rate caipirinhas on a sultry evening in the company of high-spirited young Cariocas, as the people of Rio call themselves. At the Simplesmente Bar (115 Pascoal Carlos Magno), the party spills onto the street as the night wears on; at the Bar do Mineiro, just down the block, you can sip your drink on the rooftop, and at the nearby Bar do Arnaudo, the immensely cheerful hosts, Georgina and the eponymous Arnaudo, serve not only alembic cachaças but tasty little plates from
northeastern Brazil, like sun-dried beef, bean soup and roast kid.
The promised land for the newly minted North American cachaça-lover, is a bar called the Academia da Cachaça in Leblon, the bustling waterfront neighborhood just beyond Ipanema. Its museum houses 2,000 cachaças, distilled over the years since 1870. Its menu is loaded with thirst-inducing snacks like bolinhos, which are fried meatballs or cheese balls, and on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays it serves a worthy version of feijoada, the hearty pork and black-bean stew that many Brazilians eat each weekend.
The problem with feijoada is that it can leave you feeling as if you have an anvil in your belly. The remedy is a caipirinha or two, and not surprisingly, the academy makes some of the very best.
About 50 kinds of cachaça are available for tasting at the academy, a few of them aged in wood; as cachaça develops its own corps of connoisseurs, producers are borrowing techniques from France and Italy. Michael Jackson, the British expert on beer and spirits, ran through 10 cachaças a few years ago and reported in the pages of The Independent, the London newspaper, that he was impressed with what he tasted.
"I greatly enjoyed the resiny character of one called Havana, the peppery flavors of Nega Fulo, the hints of vanilla and chocolate in Germana and the toffee and mint of Senador," Mr. Jackson wrote enthusiastically.
I guess that makes me a philistine. I can do without spice or candy flavors in my cachaça. For me the whole point is something that has the woody taste that blends so felicitously with the clean sharp snap of fresh limes.

Recipe: Caipirinha
adapted from Cafe Atlantico, Washington
Time: 8 minutes
2 limes, each cut lengthwise into eighths
4 tablespoons superfine sugar
8 ounces cachaça.
1. Place four lime pieces in a 9-ounce rocks glass,
and sprinkle with 1 tablespoon sugar. With a wooden
spoon, muddle lime and sugar for about 30 seconds to
release oils in lime skin; do not crush lime.
2. Fill the glass with ice cubes, and add 2 ounces
cachaça. Cover with the lid of a cocktail shaker, and
shake vigorously for 30 seconds. Serve in the same
glass. Repeat to make four drinks.
Yield: 4 drinks.

Sandman,

Nice post I have been trying to mix a decent caipirinha since I was in Rio (seems like a lifetime ago) with no success. I will try it out tonight I have some Pitu in my drinks cabinet.

My Opinionated (as usual) Opinion:

Nice article, SM! I beg to differ with the recipe, though - what do a bunch of New Yorkers know anyway? The overall method is OK, but the details are all wrong, and a good caipira is all about the details.

To start with the sugar... superfine? No, use ordinary sugar but make sure it is CANE sugar, not beet sugar. If you dont' mind the brown color, use raw sugar (demerra), tastes even better.

The cachaca, on the other hand, should be as dry as possible - Pita and 51 are too sweet IMHO (Pitu is barely acceptable), Velho Barreiro is way too sweet, although these about all you can get in the US. Don't use a really good cachaca (Nega Fulo, etc) for caipirinha, that's just silly, like using a fine havanna rum for cuba libres. The ideal cachaca, again IMHO, is Ypioca Prata (most barmen in Rio use it), although Sao Francisco is also good. Either is about US$1.50 - 2.50 a bottle, so just stock up next time in Rio. I've come back to the states with up to a dozen bottles with no problem, although I think the limit is 4 per person.. but what's the worst that customs can do? Confiscate 10 bucks worth of liquor, oh well. (As I side note, I once had a bottle leak a bit in my luggage, you should have seen the drug-sniffing beagle bitch swoon when she took a whiff of it! Shook her head and snorted and sneezed to get the smell out of her nose, hehe. Anyway, since she didn't wag her little tail, the customs officer ignored me). Anyway, any DRY cachaca that's not too expensive is fine. if you absolutely can't find cachaca, make "Caipiroskas" using vodka - Smirnoff's is fine, again dry and relatively cheap is the way to go.

Do not crush lime? WTF? Mash the hell out of it! A wooden pestle is best (I've broken wooden spoons making caipiras), but whatever you have on hand will have to do. In Brazil, you either crush the limes in a cocktail shaker or in a special wooden mortar and pestle - preferably rosewood - but in the States, use whatever you have on hand. For instance, I've used a saucepan and the handle of a chinese cleaver. Whatever you use, it needs to be strong, becuase you really want to mash those limes with all your might. Now the most important detail is how you cut up the limes. First of all , make sure you buy nice, heavy limes (heavy for their size, that means they are juicier) that are a bright green (dark means older) and with a supple, unblemished as possible skin (remember, half the taste comes from the oils in the skin!). The stem of the lime is bitter, so you need to cut that out, here's how to do it. First cut off both ends of the lime about 1/4 inch in and discard (the two "nipples" on each end of the lime). Now stand teh lime on end - you'll see the top part of the segments of the lime (where you sliced across the stem). Where the segments come together there is a thick white dot which is a continuation of the stem and runs through the orange to the other side (kind of like the core of an apple). That's the part you want to cut out. Make 3 cuts lengthwise thru the lime - first one is almost cutting in half, but leaving the "core" to one side, so that you have a thich slice with no core.. if this were a clock, you'd be cutting from the 2:45 9almost 3 oclock) postion to the 9:15 position - the second cut is from just next to the core to the 5 oclock position.. leaving a medium thick wedge with no core and a thin wedge with the entire core at the tip of the wedge. Now the third cut, you slice the core out from the thin wedge (that's why you want to make the weird oblique second cut, so that the core is easily cut off on the third cut). Now that you got rid of the core, all you need to do is slice upt he rest into easy pieces for the mortar adn pestle - usually slice the first thick slice in haldf and half again, and the other wtwo slices in half. You don't have to be too precise. This entire operation should leave you with 8 more or less equal pieces of lime, I tried to make the instructions as simpel as possible , but it's easier to do than to read.. takes maybe 8 seconds per lime once you get the hang of it.

Lastly the proportions.. to begin with, follow a recipe like the one above, but after a while you just get a feel for how much. I usually use a dozen limes, half a bottle of cachaca and half a cup of sugar (for 6 drinks ), but it's up to you.Besides it's easy to adjust, just add more limes, sugar, or booze - most of my female friends think my caipira is too strong and not enough sugar while most of the guys think it's fine.... i worry about those who want more sugar ;-)

Enjoy!

BS

Well, BS, it was an edited reprint from a NY Times article. Naturally, they have to give some credit to a NY establishment to get their readers interested.

I do agree with you on the methodology;

If BS's intricate description leaves you somewhat baffled (he is a techie), just watch the bartenders at Help some night between 11-12 making huge pots full of Capris. You will get the hang of the slicing of the lime but you will get a better idea of the mashing of the lime concept.

OH, one other thing; You can bring all the liquor you want to back to the US. You just have to pay a duty on anything over 2 bottles (except the USVI which I think is 12). They will usually let you through if you are 1-2 bottles over as the effort to collect 10% duty is greater than the reward. (10% on a $2.50 bottle of liquor is $.25) They can't even print the damn forms that cheap much less fill them out and process the payment! Usually, just admit you owe for 1-2 bottles of liquor over your limit and they just pass you through.

On cruise ships, the customs guys don't even want to see you if you have 6 bottles or less.

In all my travels and returning with 3-4-5 bottles of liquor, I only paid duty 1 time. A whopping $1.50. I wonder what she was thinking??? Must have been a newbie!

One other clarification on Brasil; Buy your liquor and liquers upon entering Brasil at Duty Free. No use lugging the stuff all the way from the states and it is actually cheaper in BR. You can bring in 12 bottles of liquor and 12 bottles of liquers or wine (or any mix thereof). Thats 24 bottles of spirits. Enjoy your stay in BR. and look to have lots of friends visiting you after your arrival....ha ha!

Got that WhackerDog----up to 12 bottles per person!

the trick is when you quarter the lime: remove the white vein (this vein will make the drink ruin the taste).

Whoops! to much coffee and too little sleep when writing my instructions on how to slice limes. Sandman's right, unless told to shut up, I tend to write/speak like a tchnical manual. Jsut slice out the white vein, like Diversity wrote, end of story.

Saude!

BS