Pisco

Sunday, April 27 – Day 131

I mentioned before that pisco is the national liquor of Chile. It’s made here in the Elqui Valle, and the city of Pisco is only about 20 miles from Vicuna – how convenient. It’s a tiny little town at the end of a two-lane road that dead-ends into a mountain.

Pisco is made from a grape that has a lot of natural sugar, so if you ferment it all, it makes a wine with a pretty-high alcohol content. It’s further distilled, like brandy, and then aged in oak barrels to give it various taste characteristics.

They make a lot of very cheap pisco, and that’s the stuff that you use to make a pisco sour – add the lemon juice, ice, sugar, a touch of egg-white, and cinnamon. With better pisco, you just use 2 parts pisco and 1 part lemon juice, and shake over ice. The best pisco is taken straight-up, just like brandy.