Caldo de cana

Fed through the rollers with the cane. Without it the glass is sugar and nothing else.

Pressed in alongside the stalks at the stall; tropical acid stops the sweetness going flat.

A knob crushed with the cane. The burn lands late and shortens a very long sugar finish.

Cooling volatiles over raw sugar, which is why the Indian press keeps a bunch beside it.

A pinch of black salt turns a glass of pure sugar into something drinkable in real heat.

The spirit and the juice it came from. One is the field, the other is the still.

The market pair: a pastel stuffed with palm heart, then cane juice to rinse the frying oil off.

Sour seedy pulp is the strongest brake there is on this much sugar. One spoon a glass.

Grated flesh blitzed through turns the glass cloudy and gives the sugar something to hang on.

Boil this down and you get the block. The raw juice keeps the grass that boiling drives off.

Ferment the juice and run it through a still and you have cane spirit. This is the starting line.

Vietnam squeezes the whole fruit in, peel and all. Bitter oil where lime would give only acid.

Sour dried pod stirred through raw cane sugar; two things that already share a market stall.

Both taste of cut grass before they taste of anything else, and sugar carries bitterness far.