The Ultimate Caipirinha

In today’s post I am going to tell you about what I think is the best caipirinha there is. I never thought I’d find a fruit that suited this cocktail better than the good old classic limão (lime), but I’m confident that when you try one of these you will agree. The fruit in question isn’t easy to find, but if you can track it down, you will have something pretty special on your hands. Let’s take a look at it shall we?

Limão Cravo – unassuming looking little fellows aren’t they? This fruit goes by many names (even in Brazil!): Limão Galego, Limão Lava-tacho, Limão Bode, Limão Rosa, Limão Capeta. Outside Brazil the list grows longer still: Rangpur lime, Canton Lemon, Hime Lemon.

A confusing list of names for a citrus fruit? After recent posts, I don’t expect any of you to be surprised by that! This fruit was mentioned in the comments of a few recent posts and I had been keeping a look-out for them for a while. You don’t find them in every supermarket, but I managed to track them down a few days ago in the organic section of Zona Sul. As I appear to be going through a bit of a mystery-fruit obsession a the moment, you won’t be surprised to hear that I hurried home to take a better look at these strange things.

As far as I can tell, the little barnacle looking things on the surface of the skin seem to be part of the design – certainly all the specimens I bought had them and it didn’t seem to affect the pith/fruit below. The name (limão) suggests that these are limes, but the colour makes you think of a tangerine right? Well it seems like they are a bit of both – wikipedia says it is a cross, with the Latin Name Citrus x limonia.

I cut through the orange-green skin, expecting to see some green-yellow flesh inside. Not at all!

Intense orange!

Yes, limão cravo has a few seeds. But it more than makes up for that in the flavour department.

Lovely looking fruit isn’t it? But don’t be fooled – this thing is packing some serious acid.

As I cut the limão into segments I started to understand what all the fuss is about. A delicious, fresh, sweet yet intensely acid aroma filled the room. These things are seriously sour! But the flavour is out of this world.

It was time to put the limão cravo to the caipirinha test. I used my standard recipe – one lime in an Old Fashioned glass along with 2 teaspoons of sugar, 5 or 6 ice cubes and plenty of cachaça (I’m working my way through a bottle of Boazinha at the moment).

Caipirinha limão cravo – in my opinion, the best caipirinha there is.

The results were spectacular! My tasting partner agreed that this was the best caipirinha she’d ever tried and we both wondered why this delicious drink isn’t a regular on cocktail bar menus.  My wife suspects a bar-tender conspiracy as they keep these delicious limes for their after work drinks!

My new favourite drink – caipirinha limão cravo.