It’s August in Cuzco, and I’m sitting at the Museo del Pisco, at 11,000 feet in elevation, crushing stiff and frothy pisco sours alongside straight distillates. With more than 300 bottles of liquor in the back bar, this is the primo place to catch a buzz and a little bit of education on the country’s pride and joy: pisco, a floral, tropical Peruvian grape brandy. Besides trekking to Machu Picchu and eating guinea pig (a delicacy here), my goal was to connect San Francisco’s long history with Peru—both its people and its booze.
My fascination with pisco began when I met Duggan McDonnell, a San Francisco historian, the author of Drinking the Devil’s Acre and a co-owner of Campo de Encanto who also has stakes in Union Square’s Cantina. Tasting pisco while on a trip to Peru was all it took to start McDonnell’s journey down the pisco rabbit hole that has become his life’s work.
“I thought, ‘This stuff is beautiful—this is what early San Franciscans were drinking,’” he says. Indeed, it was pisco—not Fernet-Branca or Irish coffee—that fueled the wild nights of the old Barbary Coast. Doesn’t pisco deserve a chapter in the history of San Francisco spirits?
McDonnell shook me up a couple of Pisco Punches while sharing the tippled history of the chief spirit of every miner and fisherman at every San Francisco bar, most famously the Bank Exchange & Billiard Saloon, located where the Transamerica Pyramid stands today. Here a man named Duncan Nicol created the Pisco Punch, blending together the tropical flavors of lime, pineapple gomme and a vermouth that contained coca leaves.
Nicol kept his recipe closely guarded. During the 1906 earthquake, while the city burned, Nicol and his barmen stood out front with rifles in hand. When local firefighters attempted to burn down the Bank Exchange Saloon to create a firebreak, they were threatened with their lives. The firefighters moved along.
The Production of Pisco
Peruvianpisco, like wine, is regulated by controlled destination-of-origin rules. All grapes must be grown, distilled and bottled within five states of Peru and can be made from only eight grapes. Puro is the distillate of a single grape. Acholado is a blend of any of the eight grape distillates. Mosto Verde (which literally means “green must”) tends to be the priciest, because it’s distilled before the fermentation process has converted all the sugar into alcohol—distilled once and never diluted. Stainless steel and glass are the only things the booze ever touches before it hits your mouth. The result is a floral, tropical and uplifting spirit that brightens every corner of your being.
Photo courtesy of Michaela Johnson.
Pisco is named after the clay jars in which the brandy was shipped, which were manufactured in the state of Pisco. Incidentally, during his voyages around the Americas, captain Sir Francis Drake stopped at the port of Pisco, where he decided to take natives at ransom for 300 vats of the liquor. Drake got his booze and would later continue to the Bay Area to stake his claim.
A Family Affair
For Miguel Solari, a Peruvian-Italian who made his way from Peru to the Golden Gate, distributing pisco has been a family trade since the early days of San Francisco. Perhaps it’s fate, or perhaps it just runs in his blood.
As a child in Peru, he celebrated Christmas with his uncle’s pisco sours. While his mother wasn’t looking, his uncle sneaked him sips of his sour, and Solari fell in love. After moving to the Bay Area, Solari sought to reinvent pisco with a purpose.
“After college, my goal was to do something that represented my country,” Solari said. “Then this happened. All these opportunities with pisco fell in my lap.” Solari spent years distributing pisco and even helped with a couple of harvests.
Recently, Solari discovered that he is related to Nicholas Larco, an Italian businessman from Peru who arrived in San Francisco in 1849 and became a major importer of pisco. Larco went on to construct the Solari Building on 470 Jackson Street. The building is considered a San Francisco landmark and still stands to this day.
“I guess I was meant to do this,” Solari said. Some things just come full circle.
Pisco’s Fall and Revival
Pisco stumbled in popularity during Prohibition, as the pricey cost of making the booze led to a decrease in production. While the United States’ teetotalers rejoiced, boozehounds would often hop the border to Tijuana, Mexico, to drink it legally. In 1938, Carlos Herrera invented the margarita at his restaurant, Rancho La Gloria, near Tijuana. The drink catapulted tequila into fame and left pisco into its shadow.
But now pisco is being revived. Bourbon and Branch bartender (and pisco fanatic) Didi Saiki, who is part Peruvian, is planning classes on pisco for the bar, which already offers public courses on American whiskey and classic cocktails. Students will learn the nuances of the grapes used, the process of making the spirit and the San Francisco connection to Peru.
“San Francisco is the biggest market for pisco because of drinks like the Pisco Punch,” Saiki said. “I want to bridge that gap between wine drinkers and spirit drinkers, and I think pisco is the one to do that. It’s such a pure and vibrant spirit.”
Photo courtesy of Valter Balthazar.