Caipirinha de Maracuyá

Passion Fruit Caipirinha

A caipirinha is Brazilian, not Peruvian, but I’m a friendly cocktail neighbor—especially when the cocktails are really good. And like other neighboring countries in Latin America, we share many of the same tastes and ingredients.

A classic caipirinha is made with lime juice, sugarcane syrup or sugar, and cachaça, the local spirit distilled from cane sugar that has a very fresh, almost fruity flavor. Deysi Alvarez, one of the mixologists I’ve been lucky to work with, came up with this variation with passion fruit. If you find whole passion fruit, throw the seeds into the shaker. They give you even more of that really good jungle flavor.

• 1 passion fruit, halved, or 1 tablespoon frozen passion fruit pulp, thawed
• 1 lime, halved and each half quartered
• ½ ounce (about 1 tablespoon) sugarcane syrup, such as Martinique, or simple syrup (see page 235), or to taste
• 2 ounces (about 4 tablespoons) good cachaça, such as Leblon

1 Scrape the passion fruit seeds and pulp into a cocktail shaker. Save one lime section for garnish and add the rest to the cocktail shaker along with the sugarcane syrup. Mash the fruits together with a muddler or large spoon.

2 Fill the cocktail shaker with ice, pour in the cachaça, and shake for a solid 10 seconds. Add a dash more sugarcane syrup, if you’d like. Strain into an ice-filled rocks glass, and squeeze the remaining lime wedge into the cocktail.