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What Is a Pisco Sour?

Peru’s national drink is a delight

Walter Rhein

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Image courtesy of Walter Rhein

What is a Pisco Sour? Oh, you don’t know? Then, sir, or madam, I envy you. Because your first experience with the world’s greatest cocktail is still in your future, while mine is in the distant and ever more opaque past.

To put it simply, a Pisco Sour is formed when a fragment of cloud falls directly from heaven, is picked up by a mermaid, crushed into liquid by a unicorn, and served chilled in a glass with a splash of bitters on the top to keep it from rising back up to the eternal beyond.

A Pisco Sour is the drink that makes you say, “Whoa, why don’t we have Pisco in the United States?”

Seriously, Why Don’t We Have Pisco in the United States?

Pisco is a Peruvian brandy made by distilling fermented grapes. Pisco is exclusively Peruvian, although the Chileans, who are always envious of Peruvians, have a bottle of acrid, unpotable kerosene that they insist must also be called ‘Pisco’ (which it is not).

Pisco is a pleasant alcohol that is kind of similar to the perfect mixture of lime, salt, and Tequila, but without all the messing around with licking the back of your hand and…

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