Caldo de Cana

Sugarcane is not native to Brazil; the Portuguese brought it from the Atlantic islands of Madeira and São Tomé in the 16th century and built the colonial economy on sugar plantations worked by enslaved Africans, first in the Northeast around Pernambuco and Bahia. Fresh cane juice has been drunk as long as the cane has grown, the simplest possible use of the crop. The word garapa is widely traced to a West African term carried over in the slave trade, originally denoting a fermented cane drink, though the fresh juice now sold under the name is unfermented. The roadside cane press became a fixture of feiras across the country, and caldo de cana with pastel is one of the most recognisable street-food pairings in Brazil.

Cloudy pale green-gold in the cup, frothed from the press and served over plenty of ice. The taste is intensely, frankly sweet — far sweeter than fruit juice, close to liquid sugar — with a green, vegetal, faintly mineral edge that keeps it from being cloying, and a squeeze of lime cuts straight through. It is cold, thick on the tongue and powerfully refreshing in the heat. Drunk fresh and fast; left to stand it oxidises and dulls quickly.

There is no cooking — the drink is purely mechanical extraction. Lengths of peeled cane are fed repeatedly through the steel rollers of a moenda press, which crush the fibrous stalk and squeeze out the sap; the same length is passed through several times to wring it dry. The juice is around forty to fifty percent sucrose by dry weight, which is why it reads as almost pure sugar. It must be drunk immediately because raw cane juice oxidises and ferments fast once exposed to air, browning and souring within hours, so vendors press to order rather than holding it.