This drink was a favorite of American expats during Prohibition. Prior to then it was known as the Milano-Torino, for the cities where its two main ingredients were first made: Milan (Campari) and Turin (sweet vermouth).

Sweet, tart and strong, the caipirinha is mixed with the Brazilian spirit cachaça. Cachaca is similar to rum but made from sugarcane rather than molasses. "It's more sophisticated than rum because it's more pure," says Brazilian artist Vik Muniz, patriotically.

In his 2001 book Straight Up or On the Rocks, William Grimes claims that Ernest Hemingway "often worked his way through about a dozen of these lime slurpees, sometimes ordering doubles, which became known as Papa Dobles."

When New Orleans bartender Chris McMillian mixes mint juleps at Bar UnCommon, he recites an ode, written in the 1890s by a Kentucky newspaperman, that calls the cocktail "the zenith of man's pleasure…the very dream of drinks."