Combine
- 1 oz cachaca
- 3/4 oz lemon juice (fresh!!!)
- 1/2 oz simple syrup
and shake well with ice. Strain into a chilled flute and pour the rest with champagne, about four ounces. Then garnish with a lemon twist.
This drink tastes like a fizzy sweet and sour, which was, incidentally, one of the first cocktails I ever tried. Mix lemon juice and simple syrup into any drink, and I’m probably going to like it. This one adds champagne, which means that it gets even a bit sweeter, but that’s okay because this is, well, a freakin’ champagne cocktail! It’s meant to be fru fru and sweet. I don’t begrudge it its sweetness, not at all.
What upsets me about the Peruvian 75 is that it’s a really good drink. It’s tastes nice. It’s bright and effervescent with lots of sweet and sour going on all over the tongue. The problem is that it uses cachaca. Cachaca is one of my favorite liquors. I love capirinha’s. I even love cachaca by itself. What I can’t stand about the Peruvian 75 is that I can’t taste any of the things that I love about cachaca. I can’t taste the molasses notes that I love about this great liquor.
Alas, I can still enjoy the Peruvian 75, because, well, it tastes good. I don’t want more than one of them for they are a bit too sweet, but I can enjoy one, certainly.