Saturday, May 2, 2009

The Classic Caipirinha and the Caipirinha De Uva

We made a lovely bunch of cold afternoon drinks today: The Classic Caipirinha and the Caipirinha De Uva.

Just this afternoon, after all, we had picked up a bottle of Cachaca, a type of rum from Brazil. We were looking for something affordable that would also make some solid cocktails. The store employee pointed us toward this bottle: Prassununga Cachaca 51.



He said that it’s the standard label in Brazil, and that many of his customers come in and say they buy the exact same thing when they’re in South America. And at $17, it wasn’t terribly expensive—although when the employee told me that you can usually get it for $9 in its home country, I felt less smug. Ha!

So we mixed up two drinks, using Dale Degroff’s recipes:


CLASSIC CAIPIRINHA

1/2 lime, quartered
3/4 oz. brown sugar syrup or 1 teaspoon brown sugar (we used Trader Joe’s turbindino, which worked great. Demarara sugar is also highly recommended)
2 oz. cachaca (or if you can't find any, use a really good rum)

Chill a rocks glass with cracked ice. Place the lime quarters in the bottom of a mixing glass, add the syrup, and muddle, extracting the juice and the oil in the skin from the lime quarters. Add the cachaca to the mixture in the mixing glass, dump the ice from the rocks glass into the mixing glass, and shake well. Pour the entire contents of the mixing glass back into the chilled rocks glass (yes, this is one of the few drinks that retain the ice used while shaking the drink) and serve.

Note: If you use rum for a caipirinha, it's suddenly a caipirissima.


CAIPIRINHA DE UVA (my favorite of the two)

1/2 lime, quartered
4 seedless red grapes
3/4 oz. brown sugar syrup (see recipe below), or 1 teaspoon brown sugar
2 oz. cachaca (or if you can't find any, use a really good rum)

Chill a rocks glass with cracked ice. Place the lime quarters and grapes in the bottom of a mixing glass, add the syrup, and muddle, extracting the juice and the oil in the skin from the lime quarters. Add the cachaca to the mixture in the mixing glass, dump the ice from the rocks glass into the mixing glass, and shake well. Pour the entire contents of the mixing glass back into the chilled rocks glass (again, one of the few drinks that call for this) and serve.

Note: If you use rum for this, it's suddenly a -- you guessed it -- caipirissima de uva.

Delicious! Cold, refreshing, fruity, but not too sweet—the perfect afternoon drink.

Enjoy!



(The Caipirinha De Uva)