The Pisco Sour is the star of this Pisco Bar.
Do not confuse pisco with pisco sour. Perhaps this phrase seems obvious, but perhaps it is not so obvious for those who are discovering pisco or are about to discover it (when they finish reading this and seeing our manual). One thing is pisco and from that comes the pisco sour. But then what is pisco? you will ask. Well asked.
“Pisco is a distillate of grape must”, explains us Leon Carrillo, owner of the oldest Peruvian restaurant in Madrid, The Golden Inti. “ And there are as many piscos as there are pisco grapes”, he continues. There are aromatic grapes (Moscatel, Italia, Torontel) and non-aromatic grapes (Mollar, Negra Corriente, Quebranta). And the piscos, in many cases, receive the surname of the pisquera grape with which it is made.
We love Pisco Sour!
Dragged by the success of Peruvian gastronomy, Peruvian pisco (the nuance is important because there is also Chilean pisco) has taken so much "strength" in recent years, he tells us Jaime Monzon, chef from Lima in charge of ** La Cebichería de Trafalgar, ** “which now there is pisco of great quality”, he says. "So much so, that now the pisco can be consumed alone”.
And it is consumed alone, in a short glass, perhaps, in small sips, but since it is such a pure distilled flavor, with such a strong graduation (the Peruvian is usually at 42º), not everyone “is used to strong alcohols ", remember Miguel Valdiviezo, chef of Tampo Y the cevicheria, and so the most common use and consumption of pisco is in cocktails. "And the most emblematic is the pisco sour."
Here is the difference, perhaps because the pisco sour has become so famous throughout the world it is almost common to order a pisco when we mean a pisco sour, but, beware, because you order a pisco the same thing, and you get a glass of the transparent distillate dry stick or they could ask you, what pisco? And offer you a long list of cocktails made from pisco, as they have in Quispe .
The secret? Hand squeezed lime juice.
The pisco sour is the most emblematic because it is also the oldest. It was invented in the Morris Bar in Lima, in the late 1920s, how do you tell us Izael Ramos, Quispe bartender. And the sour (bitter) came through the hints of narrowness added by the mixologist who created it.
Each one will have their recipe, with their details, but in general It is an easy drink to prepare at home. Just need the pisco, lime juice, sugar and beat the egg white well for the foam that makes it so pleasant and easy to drink. Jaime Monzón shares his recipe with us in the video, and Omar Malpartida, of /M Y luma , gives us the ultimate trick: the lime juice is squeezed “by hand to avoid the bitterness of the peel”. We want the pisco to be bitter, but not so much.
And finally, to be faithful to the history of this cocktail, in Peru they would serve it in a glass I want, as an inverted triangle, it was of ceremonial origin. If you don't get it, anything goes. sour cup, that more or less respects that way of being wider at the top.
Before drinking it, we only have one thing left: "Cheers, brother!"
*Vicente Gayo: camera operator. Jean Paul Porte: post-production and editing.