Pisco Sour: Peru’s Official Drink
posted at 12:01 am
on May. 1, 2004
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Taxis in Lima, Peru
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Peru’s official drink is the pisco sour. By official, I mean I never found a restaurant that didn’t serve them, and even the cocktail party at the American ambassador’s house served three drinks: red wine, white wine and pisco sours.
(Side note: While there for a jazz shindig, I was tempted to steal the wine glass etched with the seal of the embassy, but then I remembered all the guys with guns guarding the place—and the likelihood of a taxi collision on the ride home. So I stole a napkin, but later used it at a restaurant that didn’t have bathroom tissue. I feel sure I have now broken some provision of the Patriot Act…)
Pisco comes in a glass the size of a water tumbler. It usually contains two ice cubes, a dollop of beaten egg whites, a little lemon juice, and enough pisco to cauterize a wound.
At 50-60 proof, pisco has a kick to it. But it’s not smokey or bitter like American mash, and after the very first swallow, it numbs the tongue and sends scouts to the part of your brain responsible for making sense. There, they set up a perimeter and cut the phone wires to the rest of your brain.
By the time reinforcements arrive in the form of a second and third sip, your ability to stop drinking pisco has already been totally neutralized, and the rest of the pisco army goes directly into the areas of your brain responsible for making you stay out late, crave greasy food, and negotiate rates poorly with taxi drivers. On the plus side, you become able to speak Spanish fluently, or so it seemed to me.
It doesn’t make you sleepy, nor does it apparently make you invisible, much to my disappointment and later chagrin.
I planned to bring a bottle back, at least after my first two nights (night one: one drink of pisco, night two: two drinks), but then I had a whole three drinks in one night, and even though the pictures on my digital camera prove that I had a very good time, I had a physical aversion to the pisco shelf at the duty free and so must be content with my memories.
