Macunaima
WRITER/RECIPE/PHOTOGRAPHY Adrian Spinelli
Growing up in Brazil, the term "aguardente" became a commonplace way to refer to cheap cachaça. The term quite literally translates to "water that burns" or "firewater" and it's an apt description for certain bottles of the national spirit distilled from sugarcane that cost the equivalent of $1-$2 (seriously.) And as cachaça's usage has grown in American cocktail establishments, it's always surprising for me to see cachaça brands that are very much in the "aguardente" realm, behind some of the best bars in San Francisco.
So when I came across Capi Cachaça, founded by Brazilian ex-pat Cat Canetti and her partner Josh Gottesman, I was hyped to finally taste a product that felt truly artisanal and representative of the rich craft cachaça culture in the South of Brazil, where it's made in small batches. Capi is seriously one of the most robust and evocative cachaças I've had outside of Brazil, bringing the unique depth and flavor of Brazilian sugarcane to caipirinhas and other cocktails.
The eponymous capybara is a fixture in Canetti's hometown of Curitiba, where wild capybara's famously loaf and bathe in the lake of Parque Barigui while cyclists circle the body of water. Funny enough, on a recent trip to Curitiba, I discovered a cocktail which tugged at both my Brazilian and San Franciscan heartstrings: the Macunaíma. Blending high grade cachaça and a small dose of fernet with lime and honey syrup, it somehow feels like being both in tropical Brazil, and an industry enclave in SF where we kneel at the altar of Fernet.
Macunaima
Serves 1
Ingredients:
1¾ oz Capi Cachaça
¾ oz lime juice
¾ oz honey simple syrup
¼ oz fernet
Lemon twist garnish
Instructions:
Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake and serve in a lowball glass, garnished with freshly peeled lemon twist.
Note: Feel free to tweak with half lemon and half lime for a nice change. Also, regular simple syrup works fine too, but a favorite honey syrup hack is to shake very hot water into a recently emptied bottle of honey to make use of what sticks to the side. Lastly, you can up the fernet to .33oz for a little extra Frisco swagger.