Brazil’s national drinks to share Olympic hype

CORAL GABLES, Fla. — It’s tempting to call cachaça a Brazilian rum and think of the caipirinha as another muddled tropical cocktail.

The upcoming Olympics in Rio de Janeiro may change that. Brazil’s national cocktail and unique distillation of sugarcane juice into a clear liquor are poised for the kind of worldwide exposure enjoyed by tequila after the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City and Australian wines after the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.

“We Americans love to consume the Olympics and ‘travel’ there without going there by drinking and eating and celebrating the culture of whatever the host country is,” Leblon Cachaça President and CEO Steve Luttmann said in a recent interview.

Cachaça (pronounced ka-SHAH-sah) and rum share origins in sugarcane but they are processed differently.

Cachaça, by definition, must be produced in Brazil with fresh sugarcane juice and contain alcohol by volume of 38 to 48 percent. Rum can be made anywhere, and it’s usually made from molasses and distilled at higher percentages of alcohol by volume.

While the caipirinha’s sweet, tropical flavors may resemble a mojito, it’s closer in spirit to a margarita, according to Luttmann.

A true caipirinha –cachaça mixed with limes and ice — seems light but requires precision when mixing, said Rafaella Demelo, a Brazilian native and bartender in Coral Gables, Fla.

“It’s a very simple drink but it’s very hard to get it right,” she said.