A batida (pronounced like ba-chee-dah) is a classic Brazilian cocktail featuring cachaça, sugar, and fruit juice or condensed milk. Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s version leans into the fruit flavors, with lemon, pineapple, and pomegranate (in the form of grenadine) taking center stage. While we typically prefer homemade grenadine, commercial stuff usually has a brighter color that does look much prettier here.
Morgenthaler’s recipe calls for a 2:1 rich simple syrup. We stick with 1:1 syrup in Cocktail Party recipes in order to make the math easier. In this case we’ve fudged the numbers a little and increased the syrup just a touch, as we found we needed a little more to keep the drink’s sour notes in check. If you’re somewhere where you can only get pomegranate molasses, you may need to increase the simple syrup even more.
This isn’t a particularly fussy drink, and it doesn’t mind what kind of sparkling water you top it with – flavored waters are fine as long as their flavor isn’t overpowering.
