Blame it on rio; Jeffrey Steingarten is seduced by Brazil's potent national cocktail.

Byline: Jeffrey Steingarten

What are you doing with a cocktail in your hand?" I asked myself peevishly. I am a malt Scotch man, straight up, no water. And yet this summer, the fabulous national cocktail of Brazil has become my fabulous national cocktail as well. In no time a brand-new caipirinha (pronounced kie-peer-EEN-ya) had been set before me-tart, frosty, delicious, vaguely alcoholic, a hot-weather restorative made with fresh lime, sugar, lots of ice, and cachaca (pronounced cah-SHAH-sah), a type of white rum distilled from sugarcane.

Discarding the plastic straw, I brought the glass to my lips. It's better that way, with your nose right there in the glass, a few millimeters from the nectar within, where it can sense the aromas of sugarcane alcohol and lime and enjoy the way they develop as you absorb the cachaca and the ice melts over chunks of lime, swollen with white cane sugar and alcohol and the bitter citrus oils from the abraded green skin. And as I got even closer, I began to hear the distant rhythms of a samba.

In recent years, the caipirinha has been gathering a massive following. Some people cut down on the lime and add other fruits. Strawberries and fresh passion fruit are great favorites, and I've had many rewarding evenings in the company of blood oranges. A caipirinha made with vodka instead of cachaca is known as a caipiroska. This appeals to Brazilians who asso_ciate cachaca with the rural underclass and their backyard stills. Uma caipirinha, after all, means literally "a little country girl."

There are dozens of recipes for the traditional caipirinha, always simple, pure, and innocent. The differences are very slight-a bit more or less of something, unrefined sugar instead of the white stuff, a fancied improvement in technique. Here's what you do. Find a sturdy, wide glass with a capacity of ten to twelve ounces (such as a rocks glass or sour glass or old-_fashioned glass). Wash a fresh lime. Cut off the ends of the lime and slice it in half, lengthwise. The white stripe that runs down the center of each half is the pith, always very bitter; remove this by making an angled cut along both sides of each stripe. Flip the halves flesh side down, cut them again in half lengthwise and slice the four quarters crosswise in two places, yielding twelve chunks in all. (Limes come in various sizes; the chunks should fill a half-cup measure.) Drop them into the glass. Sprinkle a tablespoon (maybe only two teaspoons) of superfine sugar over the limes. Now go ahead and muddle. Using a muddler (an eight-inch wooden rod with a wide flattened end) or a pestle or the bowl of a wooden spoon, press and twist the sugar into the chunks of lime, five to ten times, until the sugar dissolves and the lime has yielded up its juice and some of its oils. Then pour in two ounces (a quarter-cup) of cachaca, or a little less; stir enthusiastically; add about a cup of ice cubes; and stir or shake again. Sip it and smile.

Has it ever occurred to you that in all you've read about the qualities of wines and liqueurs, of lagers and cognacs, of vodkas and bourbons, nobody has ever mentioned the fundamental reason we drink alcoholic beverages? Whether it's Ch,teau d'Yquem or a bottle of Thunderbird in a brown paper bag, we drink in order to get high. Yes, Yquem is a drug-delivery system. And yet people who write about alcohol never compare the high of one drink to that of another. It's time we got started.

Your first caipirinha of the evening will leave ...