Carnival Time !!! Samba & caipirinhas !!!

Its carnival season and time to go out and buy some fresh tropical fruits for the caipirinhas.
Caipirinha is the national drink of Brasil and Portugal too...
There are inumerous recipes for caipirinhas, with Vodka, Rum, even with White Port, dont believe me?
Here's a few recipes for unusual caipirinhas.

Caipiroyal

2 oz White Port Real Companhia Velha
2 Lime quarters
2 Strawberries
2 bsp white cane sugar

Mash the fruit with the sugar, add the white Port and crushed ice
Shake and serve

BrandyMel Smash

1 1/4 oz BrandyMel Portuguese Liqueur
2 Mandarine wedges
2 Lime wedges
1 oz Ginger Ale

Mash the Mandarines with the Limes, add the BrandyMel and crushed ice
Shake well and top with Ginger Ale

Mediterranean Caipirinha

2 oz Sagatiba Cachaça
2 grapes
2 basil leaves
1 strawberry
2 bsp white sugar

Mash all the ingredients together, then add the cachaça and crused ice

Shake well and serve

Mash the fruits and the basil with the sugar, add the cachaça and crushed ice
Shake well and serve

Cachaça Boom Times!!

Brazil's First National Invention

Cachaça was the first Brasillian invention decades before Bartolomeu de Gusmão's revolutionary hot-air balloon or Santos Dumont's airplane. Though records of its creation are sketchy, it is certain that its invention coincides with the cultivation of sugar cane, the country's first mass crop.


The first seedlings of sugar cane came from Asia in ships commanded by Portuguese coloniser Martin Afonso de sousa arround 1532.Records indicate that the drink was first created in a plantation arround São Vicente, on the southeastern coast of São Paulo,Brasil.


Rum (made from the distillation of molasses) was being made well before the first sugar cane seddlings reached land in the Americas. This drink was eventually produced in Brasil untill someone, by curiosity or clumsiness, filled the still not with molasses, but with fermented sugar cane juice. The result was a less sweet drink with an intense, pleasant aroma. There, one of the world's main spirits was Born: Cachaça.

Sagatiba Wallpaper

1 1/4 oz Sagatiba pura Cachaça

3 bsp of vanilla sugar

3/4 oz of passion fruit

1 small slice of chilli pepper

Mix and stirr all ingredients in a mixing glass with ice and double strain into a chilled martini glass.

Garnish with chilli pepper and a vanilla stick.

Courtesy of "Cachaça Sagatiba, pure spirit of Brasil" http://www.sagatiba.com/