Celebrate the Olympics with a taste of Brazil at suburban bars

While you watch the Rio Olympics, you can get a taste of Brazil without a passport. Local bars and restaurants are serving up traditional Brazilian cocktails and Brazilian twists on other classic sippers, which will keep you refreshed while you cheer on Team USA.

An obvious choice is the caipirinha, Brazil's national drink made with the Brazilian spirit cachaça, which is distilled from cane sugar. The spirit is believed to predate rum and was first developed by Portuguese colonists. Cachaça has a lower alcohol content and less sugar than rum.

“You get more of the earthy feeling from it in the nose and the palate,” said Yaguara Cachaca co-founder Thiago Camargo. “It's more of a grassy, earthy spirit than rum.”

Fogo de Chao Brazilian Steakhouse, a Brazil-based chain with locations in Rosemont and Naperville, has been making their own brand of cachaça for four years in Southern Brazil and using it for their signature caipirinhas. “If you ever go to Brazil, or if one of your friends went to Brazil, it's a killer, you have a caipirinha every time you go there,” said Chicago-area manager Paulo Serafini. “It's just refreshing, it's just great.”

The restaurant also offers a version of a caipirinha with passion fruit puree and gives the spirits a starring role in brunch with a Bellini caipirini featuring cachaça, peach puree, lime juice and prosecco and a cachaça Bloody Mary mixed tableside and garnished with manchego and bacon.

Loews Hotels are celebrating the Olympics Aug. 5-21 with each location serving up their own take on the caipirinha. The Ashburn at Loews O'Hare in Rosemont is mixing up the Flight to Ipanema, which uses 10 Cane rum, lemon juice, muddled lime and simple syrup and is served on the rocks garnished with a lime wheel.

“It's a light, not-too-heavy-on-the-alcohol summer drink that you can enjoy,” said Loews director of food and beverage Mark Payne. “ ... They're good for a summer afternoon or evening.”

The traditional caipirinha is the signature drink at Texas de Brazil, and you can learn to make your own at a caipirinha cocktail mixology class led by Leblon Cachaca at the restaurant's Schaumburg location from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 10. For $30, you'll get two caipirinhas, appetizers and a gift bag to take home. Tickets are available on eventbrite.com.

If you're not a fan of cachaça, you can get a caipiroska, a popular Brazilian cocktail that substitutes citrus vodka. If you do like the spirit, Texas de Brazil also includes it in a bevy of other drinks like the Ipanema margarita and the Carnivale, which blends cachaça with pomegranate liqueur, lime juice, sour mix and orange juice.

“Cachaça is Brazil's most popular spirit,” said Texas de Brazil general manager Michael Truax. “Being that we're a Brazilian restaurant, we try to have some choices as far as Brazilian-style drinks.”

The restaurant also offers two Brazilian beers, Palma Louca pilsner and Xingu black beer. Since many diners are looking to try something new, those two account for half of the restaurant's beer sales.

Cachaça's appeal isn't limited to Olympic celebrations or Brazilian restaurants. One of the most popular cocktails at Mandile's Italian Restaurant in Algonquin is the Forbidden Fruit, which is made with Novo Fogo cachaça, lemon juice, ginger ale, honey and raspberries and served in a Mason jar with a lemon garnish. Owner Michael Mandile added the drink to his menu two years ago after a distributor introduced him to the brand.

“I live downtown and downtown has a bunch of things that you don't see in the suburbs,” Mandile said. “They're always trying to reinvent the wheel and you always come across new liquors and new brands. (Novo Fogo cachaça) was something different.”

The owner of Novo Fogo provided some cocktail recipes from Brazil and Mandile experimented with them until he developed the Forbidden Fruit.

“We put it on our specials list, the drink sold like crazy, so we put it on the menu,” he said. “You taste the liquor, but it's not overbearing. It's really sweet and it's really refreshing. It's the perfect cocktail for summer.”