Podcast Summary:
Drink Me A Story blends tales (today about the Caipirinha drink), fiction, and real-world exploration. Here’s the rundown:
Epic Rippers: Stories that f*&k. Raw, adventure travel stories. These non-fiction audio journals offer life lessons and stirring thoughts.
Sips and Shorts: Stories and interviews about drinks from around the world that have shaped culture and society.
The Library: Dive into “The Coin Chronicles,” an exclusive fantasy audiobook series. Each episode reveals a chapter of this epic saga of Gods, humans, and the coin that rules them.
Episode 90 Notes: Caipirinha and 1850’s Rio de Janeiro
Step into the steamy, sugarcane-soaked plains of 1850s Rio de Janeiro, where a boy-king, Dom Pedro II, wears a crown haunted by his father’s sudden death. At 25, he faces a deadly outbreak threatening his empire and his beloved Empress Teresa.
A folk remedy crafted by an enslaved healer wielding Africa’s ancient secrets and a freedman with a dark past might be the answer to their problems.
Will Maria’s forbidden knowledge save Teresa, or will Dom’s grief burn them all? Uncover a tale of betrayal, forbidden medicine, and a drink born from loss—cachaça’s legacy, the caipirinha. Tune in to explore how a child king’s pain reshaped Brazil, forging progress from the ashes of smallpox and slavery’s end, and set the stage for a global cocktail.
Summary of Podcast:
*Note – This is a summary of the full episode and containers spoilers. You can always listen to the podcast above.
The Rise of a Boy King In Rio
Dom’s rise to power was sudden and violent, not at all the way he wanted or expected to gain power. Because, after all, what 6 year old would wish for his father’s death so he could become king?
No, at that age, a child cares about toys and boy things, back when boys were boys. He wanted to run and play. All children deserve that bubble of innocence that comes with youth. What Dom did not want was to become the king of a country. What does a child need with secretaries, military generals, treasurers, or councils?
It’s easy to look at the world today and think that our upbringing and the way we raise kids now set the standard. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. For most of human history, situations like Dom’s were more common than not. Many kids had few memories of their parents. Life was harder, and by harder I mean the threat of death was greater than it is now. Today, life might be harder in certain ways, but at least you’re alive longer.
Which is why the death of his father at a young age didn’t make Dom exceptional.
But he was a polymath. And fluent in many languages. Both of which today are a bit more rare. These things, plus his love of the arts, of science and medicine, and progress, made him capable of handling things like the smallpox rise of the 1850s with more competency than others.
Smallpox Attack
It wasn’t exactly an epidemic that struck Rio de Janeiro in the 1850s. During this time, young Dom ruled the Brazilian Empire in his mid-twenties. He was still young and inexperienced. And the severity of the small pox outbreak made Dom wake often in a cold sweat, reliving the horrors of his youth.
The tragedies of the father weigh heavy, and the death of Dom’s father from smallpox fifteen years before, brought up all those old, familiar feelings of loss and sadness.
How many more would lose their fathers and mothers due to small pox, and had he worked hard enough to create the right conditions to stop the spread of the disease?
Dom had his doubts.
He’d tried. But what could a 25 year old do? What can any of us do against human nature?
You see, it was only a year prior, in 1850, when slavery in Brazil came to an end. African Americans had sold their own people to more of their people and to Europeans in Brazil. Someone needed to work the fields of sugar cane and coffee plantations. They needed house servants. Dock workers and street vendors, too.
People often feel overwhelmed by the culture and situations of their times. They’ve wondered how they could make a difference in this vast system. Or how they can change things for the better. They want to make a difference and live out their motivations for a better world. Such is the energy and purity of youth, unsullied by the realities of time and age.
It was this youth that led Dom to push for the end of slavery, which happened. But the end of slavery didn’t mean an immediate end to slavery-like conditions. And many still lived in cramped conditions, struggling with poverty and rampant disease.
African American Witch Doctors
Diseases like smallpox, which women like Maria were fighting in their own way. Maria’s way, as a witch doctor, with a drink that boosted immunity.
The conviction of the woman was the only reason Dom had allowed Domingo to undertake the journey. He would try anything to save Teresa. She was a saint. She caught smallpox while working in the crowded slums of Rio de Janeiro. There, she fed and cared for the poor.
Dom felt hit hard by her illness. It stirred up old emotions from his father’s death. Many of those feelings had never seen the light of day. They were buried deep within the husk of the little boy still living inside Dom.
He had his own doctors working. But, he also needed the drink. They were taking the spirit and using that already, applying it to clean her sores. They said that the chance of permanent scarring was less if they kept the affected areas clean.
Teresa said it burned when they applied it. It must have, because she squeezed his hand hard any time they dabbed the spirit on her open sores. They turned fire red and swollen, but seemed to subside in the days that followed.
Dom, at this point, had departed the city of Rio with his wife. They had no kids, and she was all he had. He couldn’t lose her too.
Which is why Dom was determined to try everything. Including asking Maria for help. Especially when her condition worsened.
Maria was a second-generation slave. She was born into the trade. A house servant. Working for a wealthy Portuguese shipping merchant. Her life, by many standards, had been good so far. Sure, she wasn’t free. But, the merchant took care of her decently well. Better than most. She was spared the cramped quarters that many others were forced to endure.
Her perspective on medicine changed when they vaccinated her with a cowpox vaccine. She got sick and threw up for days. Her arm swelled up, turning tender and bright red.
When she recovered, she began sneaking into the library at night and reading books. Knowledge posed a danger for a slave, and she had never acquired the ability to read. Which is why she looked at the pictures more than red. But, it was that way of learning that helped her identify plants. From there, she began listening to the old men, her father’s uncles. Her father was killed several years prior.
They taught her the old ways of Africa. Of ancient medicines from plants. Herbs that could save. Herbs that could kill. And within the leaves and flowers of nature, Maria developed the only power she ever had in the world: the power to heal or hurt.
This power gave Maria an identity that slavery could not take away. Whatever she might be within the house of her master, she was something different outside the house. After they abolished slavery, Maria could finally use her power for more than just healing the sick and injured in her community.
But, to her sadness, she discovered that the end of slavery was only the beginning of freedom. The beginning, as one often learns, is only the first steps on a very long journey. That was a hard lesson Maria learned. The plants couldn’t teach her about human nature and life.
King Dom summoned her without warning. But she rushed to his aid, feeling it was a great honor. Perhaps, times were finally changing, she thought, as she let the royal guards escort her back to the vacation home of Dom Pedro II.
She had never met the king in person, not even seen his face before. But he was younger than she was. She marveled that a boy should have so much influence on the world because, to her, Brazil was the world.
He took her to his wife, who lay in a bed, covered in sores. “Smallpox,” he said, tears brimming in his eyes. “Can you help?” he asked.
Help, she thought. Stunned by the request. What could a simple girl like her do to help a great king and his queen? She said she would try, but she needed some ingredients. With the snap of his fingers, Dom demanded the vendor.
He arrived in chains that clanked with every step.
Domingo, the thief, King Dom said, “It’s time for you to earn your freedom.” Dom held out a tiny ruby. “My guards will be going with you.”
Domingo looked from María to the king to the woman in bed. He nodded and held out his shackled hands to the guard, who unlocked them.
Hours later, Domingo was walking through small farms in Campos, searching for what he needed. Two guards with swords and leather armor were following him. For a second, he contemplated running. He had the small ruby. He could live a good life with the money he made from selling it.
But also one ingredient for his freedom. It was an ingredient so rare that he considered, as he walked, whether the punishment fit the crime. After all, all he’d done was try to sell things on the street.
The Hunt For A Rare Lime
The fruit he sought was rare: Citrus Limonia. The rangpur lime. The mandarin lime. The Cravo lime. It had many names.
It was rare and expensive. Which is why the elites were the only ones who used it, consuming it as a delicacy or for medicinal purposes. In this case, the medicine woman had requested it to save the woman dying in the bed. He didn’t know who she was, and it didn’t matter. She was his ticket to freedom.
Domingo grew up as a free man. Being African American in 1820s Brazil was like being a slave. The only distinction was the master. Instead of another owning him, poverty enslaved him. Destitution forced him to make a living any way that he could. Generally, that meant being a street vendor selling things to the wealthy. One of the things he sometimes sold was the mandarin lime.
When he could find it, of course. Because it was as rare as it was tasty. It’s a unique blend of sweet and tart, and usually only grown in private gardens.
The one time Domingo got his hands on some, he had to sneak into a back garden and steal them. He had cut open his leg when escaping, the wound getting infected. He still felt the weight of his sin. Today, he walked with a limp. They had to scoop out a piece of flesh from his leg to save it.
Campos was soggy, poorly draining farmland that spread flat for as far as the eye could see. The sea of mud was a fitting name for the area. It was so flat you could see the Earth curve at the other side of the horizon. It was impossible to lose the two guards trailing him on this land. But the marsh would be another story.
As a boy, there had been more trees in this area. They cleared them for sugarcane. The low-growing plants, marshes, and mud gave the land an apocalyptic feel. Which felt fitting. More smallpox, Domingo thought. Other diseases too. The end of slavery but the start of oppression by money instead of masters.
We’re all slaves to something, he mused; all we can do is hope to pick our master.
He walked for so long that his shin started to throb with every step. He knew then that he was near. The bugs were intensifying too. Another sign that the marsh was close. Now was not the time to give in to pain.
The marsh had few paths that provided a safe passage through it. Many died here, confused by the thick brush. The ground was soft in places. You could step right through it and get stuck below the surface, like breaking through ice on a pond in winter.
Domingo picked up his pace, fighting against the barking in his shin.
As expected, the guards started moving faster. But they were laden down with swords and armor. They couldn’t keep up, and he lost them in the twisting, winding ways of the marsh.
Best of all for Domingo, he had the ruby.
Worst of all for Dom, he still didn’t have the lime he needed.
Worst yet for Maria was that she couldn’t make the drink she needed to make without those limes.
So, when Dom’s wife Teresa died, he felt compelled to punish those who had let him down. That included Maria.
Sure, it wasn’t fair. But hurting people hurt people. Especially when those hurt people haven’t dealt with their past hurts. They keep burning the world. They spread anger and hate. Their presence makes everything worse.
Maria survived less than 24 hours longer than Teresa. The old ways of medicine were denounced by Dom, and he had her burned at the stake for being a witch.
What came from this time was the rise of medicine and sanitation standards in Brazil. It ushered in a new age of advancement. One that Teresa or Maria would never see. Domingo either.
Because he tried to sell the ruby to the wrong people and met his own tragic end at their hands.
And in the end, the home drink remedy that could have changed it all by saving Teresa cost them all.
The struggle for survival continued.
Dom never learned the most important lesson. Which was that in life you always meet twice, and it’s never good to burn the bridges you might have to walk later in life. Ruling over a system of slavery and submission meant that no one trusted him. Their loyalty went as far as his strangling grip.
But humans will always search for a way to fuck over the master, if only for a chance to regain self-respect.
And the drink that Teresa never drank, because she never got her limes…well, that’s still around today.
The Caipirinha
The drink was a folk remedy made from limes, sugar, and a Brazilian spirit. This spirit comes from fermented sugarcane juice.
Cachaça (pronounced ka-SHAH-sa)
It was drunk as a way to boost immunity, although it never held such power in reality.
And ka-SHAH-sa became the Caipirinha (Kai-PUR-Eeen-Ya)
A modern Brazilian cocktail with ka-SHAH-sa, lime and sugar.
These days there is less backstabbing and smallpox as part of the drink and more fun.