While Brazil’s national spirit is sweeping the globe, the young hotshots running Rio de Janeiro’s Academia de Cachaça explain there’s more to the spirit than what meets the palate.

Rio de Janeiro may be best known for its decadent late winter Carnival. However, thanks to Rio’s magnificent bar scene, the insanely beautiful people inhabiting it and cachaça—the national spirit of Brazil—a visitor can have his or her mind blown by the sensuous carioca (local) culture all year round.Internationally, the party is just beginning for cachaça. In the U.S., cocktail enthusiasts and mixologists alike are starting to samba to the beat with such brands as Cabana, Santiba and Leblon. The traditional Brazilian mint-laden caipirinha and its fruity cousins are the most common vehicles being used to bring the newly trendy spirit to the palates of thousands.

That said, however, cachaça’s global future potential is best understood with visit to the Academia da Cachaça in Rio. The branch in the upscale Leblon neighborhood (which no doubt inspired that lifestyle brand) is unassuming at first glance. However, a closer look reveals it takes hundreds of cachaças from all points in Brazil to tell the story of how a humble sugar cane spirit evolved into one of the country’s great gastronomic institutions. The caipirinha also takes flight in the Academia’s phone book-sized cachaça menus, with variations gorgeously showcasing both familiar and regional tropical fruit, spices and cocoanut.

Co-owner Leonardo Rangel and his partners, who grew up with and now have taken over business operations of the spirits museum-cum-restaurant founded by Edméa Falcão, Renata Quinderé and Hélcio Santos (Rangel’s father) in 1983, guide us through eight Batidas, highly-concentrated fruit-infused cachaça shots that go down smooth and provide a nice euphoric effect.

“I think what is happening now with cachaça internationally is an extension of how it has caught on in Brazil,” explains Rocha. “When the Acadamia de Cachaça first opened, most cariocas (locals) regarded it as a secondary beverage and not a premium spirit. However, what made the Academia unique was that it was the first place where people could experience cachaça as a category of spirits with its own complexities and qualities. We were also the first place in Rio to offer caipahrinas made with all the fruits in our area. We then started to sell bottles of cachaça, because customers knew they were getting access to the purest and best of their kinds.”

While existing brands made for the global market such as Cabana and Leblon serve as gateway cachaças outside Brazil, Rangelpredicts that the spirit overall will grow in popularity much in the way tequilas have. Based on his observations, as people develop a curiosity about what goes into a caipirhina and realize each cachaça has its different nuances as good artisanal tequilas do, the demand for better cachaças and boutique distillers brands will rise. He adds that once visitors experience the Acadamia or a rare stateside bar stocking boutique cachaça, he predicts there will be a word-of-mouth effect that will prompt the smaller, more expensive brands to enter the market.”