With summer finally here it?s impossible to resist indulging in crisp and cool cocktails. Whether you?re lunching with girlfriends, sipping sundowners with colleagues or celebrating your best friend?s hen night, fine quality cocktails set the stage for a memorable occasion.

If you really want to impress your friendship circle, why not whip up your own cocktails at home before you paint the town red. But make sure you use only the best ingredients to get the best flavour and avoid unnecessary headaches.

One of the sexiest ingredients to keep in your liquor cupboard is cachaca ? a key ingredient for a perfect cocktail. The spirit is the most popular distilled alcoholic beverage produced in Brazil where 1.5 billion litres are consumed annually.

The original and finest quality Cachaca is Germana Cachaca, made from sugar cane and aged in oak barrels for a unique and distinctive taste. The word Germana means pure, which is appropriate for liquor produced entirely by hand.

The Caetano family first produced cachaca over 100 years ago and the name pays homage to the mystical Germana ? a 19th century nun whose remedies prepared from cachaca and local herbs, attracted thousands of pilgrims. She was martyred for claiming to have such powers.

The production of Germana Cachaca begins with the growing of sugar cane by the Caetano family on the Vista Alegre ranch, which stretches over 300 hectares near the Brazilian town of Nova Uniao.

To this day, harvest and production of the spirit is done by hand, beginning with the harvesting of the sugar cane done using machetes to ensure that none of its sweet goodness is ruined.

To prevent fermentation the cut cane is immediately transported to the distillery on donkey back, where it is ground to extract the juice. The juice is gravity fed to the fermentation tanks, where ground yellow corn is added to initiate fermentation which takes two to three weeks. After fermentation the liquid is gravity fed to the copper pot still.

A single distillation captures the aromatic nature of cachaca and ensures a spirit that is pure but expresses the flavours of Germana. The spirit is then softened by resting for a few months in indigenous wood vats, before the cachaca is transferred to oak barrels where it matures for between two and 10 years.

The cachaca is then cut to 43% proof with water from the natural mountain springs on Vista Alegre estate, and bottled by hand. Each bottle is carefully wrapped in the bark of a banana tree to protect the cachaca from light and to moderate its temperature.

The end result is the finest quality cachaca which is exported to be used in cocktails around the globe.

Iced cold Coco Loco

Ingredients:

50ml Germana Cachaca

20ml Malibu

60ml Fresh Pineapple

60ml Orange Juice

15ml Passion fruit syrup

Glass:

Highball

Method:

Add all the ingredients to a shaker. Shake hard and strain into a Highball glass filled with ice.

How?s that for the perfect summer cocktail!