BIG CHILL: Neal Bodenheimer of CURE in New Orleans creates distinctive cocktail offerings using large, solid ice cubes.

Photo: Kold-Draft®

It's only taken about 400 years for cachaça, the national drink of Brazil, to catch on in the U.S. Now, though, versions of the Caipirinha cocktail as well as other drinks featuring the spirit made from distilled sugar cane juice continue to proliferate.

For instance, the official cocktail of the 2009 San Francisco Cocktail Week was the Barbary Flip, which combines the spirits cachaça, pineapple-infused vodka and Benedictine. The 2010 Fourth Annual San Francisco Cocktail Week Celebration is coming up in September — the 20th through the 27th.

And if you want to make cocktails even cooler, consider presentation ideas such as oversized ice cubes. At CURE, a New Orleans cocktail bar, owner Neal Bodenheimer features large (1¼" ) square crystal-clear ice cubes that resemble cut block ice. The distinctive square ice cubes are denser, and melt more slowly. The bar's two ice machines produce up to 520 pounds of ice per day.

Another cool idea: Spirit-based milkshakes. Herein, we provide a recipe for the Almond Cloud.