Guaraná

The pulp is not sweet. The syrup is where every gram of sugar in the bowl comes from.

A wedge over ice does for the soda what it does for cachaça: stops the sugar sitting still.

Two Amazonian juice-bar staples, sharp fruit and bitter seed, built for the same cup.

The default long drink in Brazil. Astringency under the sugar gives a blank spirit an edge.

Blended into the bowl for body; the syrup sweetens what the fruit only thickens.

Sharp berry over a syrup already pitched at berry. It arrives as one flavour, louder.

Two Brazilian sugars stacked, and the dairy rounds off the astringency the seed leaves.

Granola over the bowl. The syrup glues the toasted flakes down and sweetens them in one pass.

Roasted nut against roasted seed, with enough sugar between them to stop it turning dusty.

What Brazil actually drinks with feijoada: cold sweet fizz against a plate of cured pork.

Two roasted seeds pulling the same trick. The soda brings sugar, the coffee brings the bite.

Two Amazon seeds, both roasted until bitter. Only one of them turned up with sugar.

Another Amazon seed sold dried and grated. It puts hay and almond into a glass of soda.

Fresh root grated into the glass; the burn lands exactly where the astringency runs out.

The Amazon stimulant against the southern depressant. Brazil in one glass, badly behaved.