Cachaça

When in Rio, of course you have to try the national fire water - cachaça. For a bottle you can spend anywhere from R$5 to R$500. I would not want to mix the R$500 bottle in a caipirinha. Ypioca or 51 serve the purpose just fine.
Cachaça—the national spirit of Brazil—is distilled from fresh cane juce as compared to rum which is distilled from mollasses.
It is mainly drunk in a cocktail called caipirinha, though it warms many a poor man straight up on a cold night.


Recipe for making caipirinhas

about 2 tbsp granulated sugar, or depending on taste
1/2 lime, skin on, tips and white center removed, cut into four wedges
a couple jiggers cachaça

Muddle the sugar into the lime in an old-fashioned glass. Add ice, preferably crushed, to the top of the glass. Pour the cachaça into the glass. Stir well or better yet, fit the bottom of a shaker over the top of your glass and shake.
Be careful, the stuff is delicious and powerful. You sit there happily but after two of them you might not be able to get up. The same recipe is also used with different liquors like vodka for a caipiroska, sake for a caipisake and so on. Other fruits, like passion fruit or pineapple, are also used in the recipe, though lime is the traditional.