Bar da Cachaça holds a narrow storefront at Avenida Mem de Sá 110 in Lapa, the cachaçaria many carioca drinkers point to as the city's first. It opened in 1960, and the whole operation is a counter, a wall of bottles and a scatter of plastic tables on the pavement.
The bar trades on one thing done at length: artisanal Brazilian cachaça, poured straight or built into a caipirinha. Diário do Rio de Janeiro describes it as one of Lapa's most traditional addresses and a fixture of carioca bohemia, and Visit Rio lists it among the eight places in the city to actually drink cachaça. The menu runs to a long roster of small-producer bottles, including versions aged in wood and others infused with fruit, spice and herbs.
This is the bar for a drinker who wants to taste cachaça as a category rather than a mixer hidden under lime and sugar. The room is small and unpolished, the service is quick, and the crowd spills onto Mem de Sá as the night runs long. Skip it if a seated, climate-controlled cocktail lounge is the goal, because this is a stand-and-sip street corner, not a salon.
The space is the point and the limit. There is barely an interior to speak of, so the experience is the pavement tables, the open Lapa street and the wall of bottles behind the counter. It reads as neighbourhood rather than tourist trap despite its location, which is the balance Lapa's better bars hold and many lose.
Order a cachaça neat to start, ideally an aged one the counter recommends, then a caipirinha built with a producer bottle rather than the house pour. Wanderlog reviewers single out the breadth of the cachaça list as the reason to come, so treating the visit as a tasting beats ordering the first thing named. Prices sit at the cheap, neighbourhood end, which is part of why the bar fills with locals rather than only visitors.
The crowd is Lapa itself: after-work drinkers early, then a later, louder mix as the surrounding samba clubs and street parties wake up. It runs busiest late on weekend nights, when Mem de Sá turns into one long open-air bar, so an early-evening arrival buys a table and a quieter tasting before the crowd arrives.
The setting earns the recommendation as much as the list. Mem de Sá runs through the heart of Lapa, under the arches and beside the samba clubs, so a cachaça here comes with the street as the floor show. The Wiki Rio de Janeiro guide describes the bar as an icon of carioca bohemia precisely because it never dressed itself up, and that plainness is the reason it has outlasted flashier neighbours over six decades. Anyone working through the list should ask the counter what is new, since small producers rotate through and the staff steer regulars toward bottles that are not on the printed menu.
Who it is for: a serious cachaça tasting, a first stop before a Lapa night out, and anyone who wants the real thing rather than a tourist caipirinha. Best time to go is early evening on a weekday for the list, or late on a weekend for the street energy. A practical note: the bar keeps long hours, open Monday to Saturday from late afternoon into the early morning and closed on Sundays, so plan around that single dark night.
For the wider field, our guide to the best hidden-gem bars in Rio de Janeiro sets this counter against the city's other under-the-radar rooms, the Lapa bar guide maps the surrounding samba blocks, and the Rio de Janeiro bar guide covers where to drink across the city. Anyone building a Lapa night should also browse our pillar on the best hidden-gem bars worldwide.
Sources: Diário do Rio de Janeiro feature on Bar da Cachaça; Visit Rio cachaça guide (2026); Wanderlog, Bar da Cachaça reviews; Bar da Cachaça official Facebook page.
