Caipirinha

Juice 3 or more limes until you have about 100 ml. Cut 2 other limes into wedges and put them into a jug with the sugar. Use a muddler, or a rolling pin, to break them down. Add the lime juice and cachaça. Stir gently until the sugar dissolves. Put ice in 2 glasses and fill them with caipirinha.

Brazil’s national cocktail, Caipirinha has its roots, naturally enough, in Portugal. In its original form, ‘Madeiran aguardente de cana’ with lemon, garlic, and honey, it was said to give relief from Spanish Flu, though after a few you may have felt the symptoms. Nowadays Caipirinha, which means ‘hillbilly’, made with Brazilian Cachaça, a sugar cane based spirit, is still prescribed for relief from a common cold.

Technically, cachaça is a type of rum, the difference being that it is made by fermentation of raw sugar cane juice, while rum is made from sugar cane by-products like molasses.