Since 1985, Academia da Cachaça in Leblon has been the room that taught Rio to take cachaça seriously, treating Brazil's national spirit with the reverence a great whisky bar gives Scotch. It is part bar, part informal classroom: a place where you can drink a genuinely excellent caipirinha, learn the difference between an unaged white cachaça and a barrel-aged one, and eat one of the best feijoadas in the city, all without a trace of pretension. It is one of the most focused and rewarding drinks experiences in South America, and a mandatory stop for anyone who cares about how Rio actually drinks.
The bar opened on 25 October 1985, founded by Edméa Falcão, Renata Quinderé and Hélcio Santos, who reportedly spent about a year travelling Brazil tasting and selecting cachaças before they opened the doors. That was a bold bet at the time. In the mid-1980s cachaça was widely dismissed as a cheap, rough spirit, the stuff of hangovers rather than connoisseurship, and the founders set out to change that by giving it a proper home where it could be, in their words, experienced, known and valued. Within about a year of opening it was already being cited among the best spots in Rio, and four decades later it is regarded as a genuine temple of Brazilian drinking culture. It celebrated its fortieth anniversary in 2025.
The cachaça, and the education that comes with it
The heart of Academia da Cachaça is its list of artisanal cachaças, drawn from producing regions across Brazil. The Leblon house cites a list of dozens of labels (its own menu references more than eighty), each chosen with care, and the point is not sheer quantity but curation and knowledge. This is where the "academia," the academy, in the name earns its keep: the staff know the bottles, and they will happily walk a newcomer from an unaged branca, clear and grassy, to a barrel-aged amarela, rounder and closer to a good rum or whisky, without a hint of condescension. Reviewers consistently note that the drinks list can feel overwhelming and that the smart move is simply to trust the recommendations. That informal, waiter-guided discovery is a big part of the pleasure, and it is what makes an early-evening visit feel like learning something as well as unwinding.
It is worth clearing up one common confusion. Academia's famous collection of more than two thousand cachaças, the "Canto de Jeritiba," a museum-like wall of bottles some of them well over a century old, is displayed not in Leblon but at the group's second unit in Barra da Tijuca, which opened in September 1989. The collection, which once belonged to a Minas Gerais journalist, is the Barra branch's showpiece. The Leblon bar is the original and the more central, but if you want to see the full museum of the spirit, that is in Barra.
The caipirinha programme
If the cachaça list is the scholarship, the caipirinhas are the fun. Academia treats Brazil's national cocktail with the same seriousness it gives the spirit, pairing selected cachaças with a wide range of fruits and building a menu of house versions well beyond the standard lime. Among the signatures are the Caipirinha Acadêmica, made with key lime (limão galego), honey and a Seleta cachaça; the Brasil ao Cubo, which layers lime, jabuticaba and passion fruit with a Cristalina cachaça; and the Melzinho, an emblematic house drink of aged cachaça with honey and lemon that is often served as a shot alongside the feijoada. The classic caipirinha, of course, is exceptional, and the seasonal fruit variations are worth asking about. Between the depth of the cachaça list and the invention of the caipirinha menu, this is one of the most complete places to drink Brazilian in Rio.
The feijoada, and what to eat
Academia da Cachaça is not only a drinking destination; it is also known for its food, and above all for its feijoada, the great Brazilian black-bean and pork stew. Unusually, the house serves feijoada every day rather than only on the traditional Wednesdays and Saturdays, and it is routinely named among the best in the city, a rich, generous pot of beans with cuts of pork and dried beef, served with rice, collard greens, farofa and orange. It pairs, naturally, with a caipirinha or a shot of Melzinho. Beyond the feijoada, the kitchen turns out proper Brazilian bar food built for grazing over drinks: crisp pastéis, herbed meatballs, a cheese empada, dried-beef carpaccio, stuffed crab shell (casquinha de siri), and an escondidinho that has been a bestseller since 1986. It is the sort of menu that supports a long, unhurried session rather than a single quick drink.
Leblon, and how to use the bar
Academia da Cachaça sits on Rua Conde de Bernadotte, a short, walkable street in Leblon, the upscale beachfront neighbourhood at the far end of Rio's Zona Sul, just beyond Ipanema. Leblon is affluent and self-assured, and the bar's unpretentious storefront is a welcome counterpoint to it: a place that takes its product seriously but never itself. That makes it wonderfully flexible. It works as a pre-dinner stop for a caipirinha and a few petiscos, as a long Saturday afternoon session, and as an early-evening after-work drink where you actually learn something about what you are drinking.
It earns its place on our after-work ranking because it delivers a genuinely excellent, distinctive drink in an accessible, everyday setting, the kind of bar a neighbourhood uses rather than saves for special occasions. It tips a little more toward destination-restaurant at full dinner than the pure counter-and-pavement spots higher on the list, which is why it sits just outside the very top tier, but as a place to decompress over a serious caipirinha while picking up a little cachaça knowledge, it is close to unbeatable. For more of the city, our Rio after-work list and Rio cocktail-bar guide pick up the thread, and it sits near other hidden-gem bars in Rio worth threading into an evening.
How a bar helped rehabilitate a spirit
It is hard, now that cachaça appears on serious cocktail lists around the world, to remember how low its reputation once sat even in Brazil. For much of the twentieth century the country's own national spirit was treated as a rustic embarrassment, a cheap distillate associated with rough hangovers rather than craft, and the good artisanal cachaças of Minas Gerais and beyond were largely invisible in the fashionable bars of Rio. Academia da Cachaça set out, quite deliberately, to change that. Its founders spent about a year travelling the country to taste and select bottles before they opened, and they built the bar around the radical premise that cachaça deserved the same respect, curation and vocabulary that a good bar gave whisky or rum. Naming the place an "academy" was only half a joke.
The bet paid off. Within roughly a year of opening in 1985 the bar was already being named among the best in Rio, and over four decades it became a reference point for how the spirit could be presented and enjoyed. Much of the "cachaça rescued its own reputation" framing comes, understandably, from the house's own history and from admiring press, so it should be read as the story of an influential pioneer rather than an audited claim. But the influence is real: a great deal of the modern confidence around Brazilian cachaça, the idea that it can be sipped, aged, studied and taken seriously, was nurtured in rooms like this one. To drink here is to sit inside a small piece of that history.
The Barra museum: two thousand bottles of history
The clearest monument to that mission is not in Leblon but across the city, and it is worth knowing about even if you only ever visit the original bar. Academia's second unit, which opened in Barra da Tijuca in September 1989, houses an extraordinary collection called the Canto de Jeritiba: a museum-like display of more than two thousand cachaças, some of them well over a century old, arranged on open glass shelves. The collection was assembled by a Minas Gerais journalist over many years and later acquired by Academia, and it functions as a kind of library of the spirit, a physical record of Brazil's distilling history under one roof. It is the Barra branch's showpiece and one of the more remarkable drinks collections anywhere.
This is the source of a common misunderstanding worth clearing up. Visitors sometimes arrive at the Leblon bar expecting to find that two-thousand-bottle wall, and it is not there; the Leblon list, while deep and carefully chosen, runs to dozens of labels rather than the full museum. The two units share a name and a philosophy but play different roles: Leblon is the original, the more central and the more everyday of the two, the one that fits an after-work drink in the Zona Sul, while Barra is the pilgrimage for anyone who wants to stand in front of the whole collection. Knowing the difference lets you choose the right one for the evening you have in mind.
The feijoada, and the art of the long session
If the cachaça list explains why Academia da Cachaça matters and the caipirinhas explain why it is fun, the feijoada explains why people stay for hours. Feijoada, the rich stew of black beans and pork that is Brazil's national dish, is traditionally a Wednesday-and-Saturday affair, but Academia serves its version every day, at any hour, which tells you how central it is to the identity of the place. It is repeatedly named among the best in the city: a generous pot of beans with cuts of pork and dried beef, served with rice, collard greens, farofa and orange, and it turns a drink into a meal and a meal into an afternoon. The natural accompaniment is a caipirinha or a shot of the honeyed Melzinho, and the pairing of a heavy, savoury stew with a sharp, cold cachaça drink is one of the great combinations in Brazilian eating.
Around the feijoada sits a full spread of petiscos designed for grazing, from crisp pastéis and herbed meatballs to a cheese empada, dried-beef carpaccio and a stuffed crab shell, alongside an escondidinho that has been a bestseller since 1986. Together they make Academia the rare drinks destination that is equally rewarding as a place to eat, and that is precisely what turns an after-work visit into something more expansive. You come for a caipirinha, you stay because the food keeps giving you reasons to order another round, and you leave having spent a proper stretch of the evening rather than a quick half hour. That gravitational pull, drink well, eat well, linger, is the mark of a genuine institution, and it is why forty years on this remains one of the essential rooms in Rio.
When to go
The bar opens around midday and runs into the late evening, seven days a week, with reduced hours on Sundays; exact times vary across sources and are worth a quick check before a special trip. For the after-work slot, the early-to-mid evening is ideal, when you can get a seat, take your time over the list and eat well before the later crowd builds. Order a caipirinha to start, ask the staff to point you from a white cachaça to an aged one, and, if you are hungry, do not leave without a plate of the feijoada. Note that the two-thousand-bottle museum collection is at the Barra branch, not here, so plan accordingly if that is what you have come to see.
What to order
- 01
A classic caipirinha
Brazil's national cocktail, made properly, the place to start.
- 02
An aged cachaça, neat
Ask the staff to guide you from branca to amarela.
- 03
Feijoada
The daily black-bean and pork stew, among Rio's best.
- 04
Melzinho
Aged cachaça with honey and lemon, the emblematic house shot.
Sources: Academia da Cachaça official history; Mapa da Cachaça; Riotur. Founding (1985) and founders, the caipirinha programme and the feijoada verified against these; the 2,000-bottle collection is at the Barra da Tijuca branch, not Leblon, and prices and exact hours are omitted as they change.
