Talk:Caipirinha

Comment
I removed much of the content of this page, as it violates WP:NOT (see the section on "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information", point 8). However, the content is contained within the wikibooks article which I have linked to. --Xyzzyplugh 03:14, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Pronunciation
I was having a hard time with the IPA editing of the pronunciation I added. Can someone fix it? (Or look at it at least?) Thanks!--will 08:17, 26 April 2006 (UTC)


 * In Brazilian Portuguese, South-Eastern dialect: []. Notice that the first syllable has a secondary stress. jggouvea 02:43, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Lemon or Lime?
Being a Brazilian-born alcohol drinker, who lived there for almost 30 years, I was a bit shaken (not stirred) to find that people everywhere else make the drink with limes. Well, the lime looks exactly like our lemon, but it doesn't taste the same (less acid). So what's the truth? Some people have reassured me that what we call a lemon is actually a lime; since I haven't seen a lime that tastes like the lemon I'm used to, I don't quite believe this theory. Does anyone have a definitive answer?

Meanwhile, I can say this to anyone wanting to make the drink: it can taste great with lemon or lime equally, but you need the most acid fruit you can get, and not sweet at all. The regular ("key") limes are too soft for a good caipirinha. LaloMartins 10:52, 3 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Preparing capirinha with limes is the closest you can get to a sacrilege if you are in Brazil. People will not drink it because the exact proportion of sugar that is used in the recipe makes the drink too sweet. We use lemons. Only lemons. And we don't even use ripe lemons, but slightly unripe ones. The point of caipirinha is the combination of sour and sweet on the top of a strong spirit. Remove either the sour or the sweet and you spoil it completely. But I am not really surprised, since I've heard that foreigners only eat our tasty Cheese buns with fillers (usually sweet ones)!. jggouvea 02:49, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

C'mon, I live in Rio and a Caipirinha made of persian lime is known as a fine (and sometimes expensive) drink. Dont be so picky. Same applies about other fruits and the way we slice it and crush it.

As an American living in Brazil for a year, one mental note I made during my time there was that the only fruit that visibly resembled our lemon was edible and sweet. The limao that is so prevalent and used in the drink is green and tastes, in my opinion, exactly like a regular lime, not a key lime, not a bitter lemon, but distinctive and lime-y. I've made limeade since moving back just because I miss the suco de limao and the limonadas we drank every day. I think the North American lime is more closely matched than the lemon.Peleguru (talk) 00:07, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

The confusion comes from the fact that in Brazil, some of the fruits we call limões are in fact acid limes. Quantos tipos de limão existem?. Because we tend to refer to lemons and acid limes as limões we use an extra name to diferentiate between the many types.

There is a good post on this forum with a picture that might help in clarifying the matter Lemon Vs Lime. To add to the confusion it seems that different regions in Brazil have different names for the same kind of lemon (or lime). In conclusion, lime is Limão Comum or Tahiti (the small, green one), and lemon is Limão Siciliano (the bigger, yellow one).

Cicero Oliveira (talk) 14:55, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

My reasoning for changing lemon to lime was all backed up by evidence and is verifiable. I don't see any reason to go back to using lemon, there is no new evidence besides particular taste. Just take a look at the picture in the article, it shows a capirinha made with lemon, and below it, on the recipe it is stated that it uses lemon. Note that this is the English version of wikipedia and we should stick to standard English naming. In the spirit of avoiding all these back and forth changes based solely on personal opinion or taste, if anyone feels the need to change this back to lemon, please ask for an editor's assistance WP:EAR or I will do it next time someone changes it back to lemon. Cicero Oliveira (talk) 13:27, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Lalo's summary
I deleted all I've written above (except for the original post, because without that one the discussion would look weird). If you want to see the original argumentation, hit the history. This is a summary of what I think, what I discovered during this discussion, and my opinion wrt how WP policy fits here.

Premise 1: the drink is made of cachaça, sugar, and “limão”. There's even a federal law codifying that.

Premise 2: one species of “limão”, which happens to be the most common one in some regions, is apparently called a lime in English. We call it “limão taiti”.

Reasoning 1: premise 2 is non-obvious; the straightforward translation of “limão” is lemon on any dictionary, and even wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon linking to http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lim%C3%A3o, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lime_fruit linking to http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lima_(fruta), and vice-versa). Therefore, as I read the policy, in order to take that into account, we would need to link a reference to a reliable source.

Reasoning 2: the recipe doesn't say “limão taiti”; it says “limão”. There are many kinds of “limão”, most of which (in fact, AFAIK, all of them except “taiti”) are lemons. All of them are acceptable ingredients for caipirinha, including Citrus limon, the common lemon most people think of when they read “lemon” (which in Brazil is apparently called “limão siciliano”).

Reasoning 3: there are also many kinds of lime, and the one we call “taiti” isn't the most common one; the word lime, unqualified, means different fruit to different people, but to most, it means key lime, which is definitely called a lime (“lima”) in Brazil, and is definitely not acceptable to make caipirinha (not a matter of taste, but of chemistry).

Conclusion: in my opinion, it would be incorrect and misleading to write “lime” in the article. At most, maybe a note somewhere about how one specific kind of lime is called a “lemon” in Brazil and can be used to make the drink (and is commonly used around here, but not exclusively).

Lime is misleading. In Portuguese from Portugal "limão" (lemon) is a different fruit from lime (lima). Though sometimes people confuse both. In Brazil that happens a lot. Many times people refer to lime as lemon and vice versa. To help the confusion there's loads of caipirinha variations. But the problem is that the original recipe is made with tahiti LEMONS which are also called "green (acid) lime" despite the fact it's really a lemon. Though the common yellow lemon is less similar to tahiti lemons then to limes, hence the confusion. It's really with lemons despite the fact most people outside Brazil will always refer to them as limes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.69.8.232 (talk) 02:55, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Couldn't we cut through this Gordian knot by agreeing to use scientific names? Personally, I was very surprised to discover that you think that "lime" means "key lime," because I have never run into a key lime sold under that name in the United States - what is sold under the name "lime" is the Persian lime, Citrus latifolia. If you want to refer to "limes," in standard US English, that is what you are referring to. More generally, citrus fruit with a green peel is usually referred to as a "lime." It would definitely make sense to add a note saying that key limes are not usual in caipirinhas, but when I've been in Brazil (many times over the past several years) I have definitely seen plenty of caipirinhas made with Persian limes, so I have a hard time understanding how "lime" is misleading. Flourish (talk) 03:44, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Third Opinion
Following a question at WP:EAR, I proffer this:
 * The US government seems to think that Citrus latifolia is a lime, as does the Australian governmenet and the Royal Horticultural Society .  The limes avaialable in UK greengrocers are usually Citrus latifolia.  There are so many citrus varieties all artificially generated from a few originals.  The RHS says that latifolia is derived from Citrus aurantiifolia  x  Citrus limon.
 * This article, although not an RS, casts some light on this. Also it appears that limão Tahiti is the Brazilian Portuguese name for Citrus Aurantifolia , which is definitely a lime. Jezhotwells (talk) 10:32, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Fourth Opinion
As a UK citizen who has spent quite a lot of time in Brazil, (who also has part Portuguese parantage) it's very clear to me that Limao is not what English speakers would call a Lemon. The closest thing we have (in the UK at least) to a Brazilian Limao is a Lime, and every time i've had a Caipirinha in either Brazil or the UK (where we have no choice but to use Limes)it has tasted the same. Plus none of the Brazilians I know (and I know quite a lot) living in the UK have ever expressed the opinion that the Caiprinhas they make in the UK with Limes are "just not the same" as in Brazil. As a note, having been given as presents various food stuffs from Brazil I can vouch for the fact that those food stuffs don't taste the same in the UK as they do when in Brazil, which I've always put down to the difference in climate, which does affect our perception of taste.

Crushed Ice
I've never seen a Caiprinha made in Brazil with ice cubes, it's always been crushed ice. Not always crushed to the same degree (not talking slushy here) but still always crushed not full cubes. So the picture and the reciepe section in my view are inaccurate and are examples of typical "appropriation" and modification of "other" culture.

Caipiroska vs Caipivodka
The Caipivodka was just added to this article as an alternative name to Caipiroska. At the moment (before a whole lot of other sites pick this change up from Wikipedia), there are only about 668 Google results for Caipivodka, and 165,000 results for Caipiroska (which is also the name identified by the International Bartender Association). Most of the sites that refer to Caipivodka appear to be written in Brazilian Portuguese (which I do not speak or read), so I cannot judge if they are reliable sources, or just sites with user-submitted drink recipes and the names are local variations.

In short, I'm not sure how notable the name Caipivodka is, and if it is worth mentioning in the article -- especially with equal prominence to Caipiroska. I would appreciate any help in figuring this out. Thanks. -- Willscrlt (  Talk &middot; Cntrb  ) 22:43, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I am a newbie trying to learn how to participate in Wikipedia according the the rules. I own a marketing company that specializes in spirits, wines and beer and so have a pretty good knowledge base from which to contribute. Regarding the Caipivodka name, I agree that the name is not notable, in fact this is the first time I've even heard it. The name I'm familiar with for a Caipirinha made with vodka is "Caipiroshka" (note the added "h"). This is the name commonly used in on premise promotional materials, articles in the trade press etc.Batboy23 (talk) 21:19, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm a brazilian from the South, living in the USA. I've NEVER heard the capivodka before. This is nonsense - the term used in Brazil is Caipiroska. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.236.84.43 (talk) 00:52, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Not true, I'm from Espirito Santo and we use the term caipivodka exclusively. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.162.78.2 (talk) 04:15, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't the phrasing of "such as the Caipivodka, (also known as Caipiroska)" in the variations section be changed to "such as the Caipiroska, (also known as Caipivodka)" to make it consistent with there being an article on Caipiroska, but Caipivodka is just a redirect to it? I'm not a big Wikipedia contributor so I don't know if there is a policy for this, but it makes logical sense to me to be consistent about the naming here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.229.178.246 (talk) 16:47, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I live in Brazil as well, and from my knowledge, the Caipiroska (either pronounced that way or as "Caipiroshka", both to resemble a russian sounding word) is most commonly known that way than as Caipivodka (although this one can also be seen at some places, as it has been stated above). People also make caipirinhas out of other spirits such as Sake ("Sakerinha" or "Caipisake") or rum ("Caipirum") and using different fruits instead of lime (Commonly called "Caipifruta" - fruta meaning fruit - which may or may not be made with cachaça, the common order being in the form "A strawberry caipifruta with vodka", for example). Nevertheless, the original caipirinha is, again in my knowledge, meant to be made with cachaça and limes (or whatever the fruit shown in the picture for the article is called in english). Variations with other sour-tasting (never sweet) fruits are acceptable, but should be ordered specifically ('e.g.' "A persian lime caipirinha"). --Monsieur.lefou (talk) 23:57, 15 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Not sure this discussion is still "alive", but I thought I'd add my two anecdotal cents, just in case. I can only speak from my own experience and from asking a few people; it seems like the "caipivodka" name has as of the last few-to-several years gradually been replacing "caipiroska", at least in Rio de Janeiro. My opinion is that both names (including spelling variations) are equally acceptable and absolutely should be included in the article.


 * Cotoco (talk) 21:03, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Caipirinha disambiguation?
The word Caipirinha was also used (around 1996) for a "Chipset" for the next-gen Amiga of that time. Although it has never made it to the market, the chipset caused quite a stir amongst Amiga fans. Would you like to consider a disambiguation page for this, in my opinion, piece of history that has already nearly gone lost forever? Information about it is very hard to find (I did find some and added a reference to the Amiga models and variants page where the Caipirinha has been mentioned briefly) and I would love a disambiguation link to start a Caipirinha_(Chipset) or something along those lines page.

I might be wrong in assuming I have to ask first (my guess is the disambiguation page will be created somehow automatically, I never started a new wiki page) but I think it won't hurt either. --RobIII (talk) 21:53, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I actually apreciate both Amigas and Caipirinhas (btw,Amiga in portuguese means "girlfriend"). Know that I know about this chipset, Im dying to read a article about it.

btw in portuguese amiga means a female friend not a girlfriend which is "namorada". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.69.8.232 (talk) 02:57, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Gay Piranhas
so, lets decide. is the nickname "Gay Piranha" true or random vandalism? or even a term created by wikipedia vandalism? see & (>> ) --CuteHappyBrute (talk) 18:38, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

If its not vandalism, its quite ofensive for brazillians and for either reasons, I guess it shouldnt be featured. It is probably derived by the fact that pronouncing "Gay Piranhas" sounds similar to "Caipirinhas" pronounced with strong american english accent.

It's certainly vandalism. I'm sure beyond reasonable doubt that nobody calls it a "Gay piranha" in Brazil. --Monsieur.lefou (talk) 23:57, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I hear this very often. We call it gay piranha all the time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.192.211.152 (talk) 22:04, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Like some fag from Switzerland would be an authoritative source on that. 177.41.4.191 (talk) 07:15, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Standard Drinkware
I can't really find a reliable source to quote, but a few years back the standard drinkware for caipirinha was elected, being favoured over the ones shown in the article. For images, search "copo de caipirinha" (caipirinha glass) on google image for several images confirming this. --Monsieur.lefou (talk) 23:57, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

History confusion
I find this confusing:
 * Caipirinha is based on Poncha, an alcoholic drink from Madeira, Portugal.[4] The main ingredient is aguardente de cana...

I would normally assume that the second sentence refers to the subject of the first, which is "Caipirinha": "The main ingredient (of Caipirinha) is aguardente de cana." But I suspect what it really wants to say is "The main ingredient (of Poncha) is aguardente de cana." I checked the source but am still confused. Kendall-K1 (talk) 12:54, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Black Vodka
Under 'Devivations', what is 'Black vodka'? 71.139.166.154 (talk) 04:43, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I've added a link to a proprietary brand which has an article. This seems to be the only suitable article. Sorry you had to wait two years for a reply. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:04, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Unsourced derivations
The unsourced derivations should be sourced or removed, per WP:V. Kendall-K1 (talk) 11:02, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
 * So that's all but the last one? Martinevans123 (talk) 11:06, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Copyvio
I removed the last two paragraphs of the History section, which were copied from. Kendall-K1 (talk) 19:54, 13 January 2016 (UTC)