The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails Definition of pisco

pisco is the characteristic grape brandy of Peru and Chile, a descendant of the aguardiente de uva made in both places, then parts of the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru, since the late 1500s that has found an enduring niche worldwide as a cocktail spirit. The Peruvian and Chilean versions of the spirit share a strong family resemblance while differing in detail (as do Bolivia’s singani and Argentina’s aguardiente de Catamarca). See Andean South America.

Many claims have been made for one sixteenth-century date or another as the beginning of distilling on the west coast of South America, almost all of them colored by the deeply acrimonious dispute between Peru and Chile over pisco’s patrimony, in which Peru seeks to ban Chile from calling their national spirit “pisco” (it is as if Ireland sought to prevent Scotland from calling their spirit “whisky”). But this debate is fundamentally a political one and will not be resolved here.

The first stills recorded in the region are in the wills of a pair of wine growers, Maria de Niza, from Santiago, in 1586, and Pedro Manuel, from Peru’s Ica valley, in 1613; neither would be the first in its area, and certainly by the early 1600s distilling was common both north and south of the Atacama Desert. The distilling regions have not changed much: the five departments where Peru allows pisco to be made today form a coastal strip running south from Lima, in the country’s center, through Ica (the center of the industry, then and now), to Arequipa, Moquegua, and Tacna, on the Chilean border. Eight hundred arid square kilometers of the central Atacama Desert—Peruvian and Bolivian until the 1879 War of the Pacific and Chilean since—interrupt the strip, until it continues with the two Chilean provinces allowed to make pisco, Atacama and Coquimbo, the bulk of the production coming from the latter.

At first, there appears to have been little to differentiate the aguardiente made in the northern region from that made in the south: both were distilled from the mission grape (the Spanish listan prieto varietal); both were mostly used to fortify wine, so that it could survive storage and shipping; both appear to have been stored and shipped primarily in large, semi-porous earthenware botijas, not wooden casks (where there are few trees, there are few barrels). Yet even in the sixteenth century there were differences. The 1586 will specifies “un alambique de sacar aguardiente”—“an alembic for drawing off aguardiente.” This would have been a valuable piece of specialized equipment, with a still head and a condenser. But such fine metalwork was common in the south: the Spanish had found extensive copper deposits near Coquimbo, and the region rapidly became known for its coppersmiths. In the north, however, distillers often preferred to make their own stills, using as little of the expensive Chilean copper as possible. In fact, the still that Pedro Manuel left his heirs is described as simply a “caldera grande … con su tapa e canon”—a “large kettle, with its lid and tube.” Manuel’s is not only the first still recorded on Peruvian territory; it is also the first record of the falca, that country’s characteristic, simplified version of the pot still. See falca. (This still was found in Chile as well, but apparently in the south, not in the north where alembics were made.) In any case, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the two aguardientes develop along parallel lines. New grapes were introduced—the ancient and highly aromatic “Italia,” or moscatel de Alejandría, introduced in the early 1700s; the even older, and also quite aromatic “pastilla” or “moscatel rosada” (muscat blanc à petits grains); the much less aromatic mollar—and were adopted in both regions. Both regions exported a large part of their production to the massive silver mines at Potosí, four thousand meters above sea level in what is now Bolivia, where eventually there were some hundred thousand miners and an insatiable thirst for aguardiente with which to fight the year-round cold and the altitude.

Meanwhile, the vines planted north and south of the desert were hybridizing as they adapted to the different climates: lower in altitude and moister in Peru, where the grapes generally grow in valleys parallel to the coast; much drier and sunnier in the higher-altitude Chilean valleys, which stretch from the crest of the Andes to the coastal plain. There were other differences. In Peru, most of the distilling happened on large estates, many of them run by Catholic monastic orders, and the spirit made was destined for export, largely through the port of Pisco, just to the north of the Ica valley. From there, aguardiente was shipped to ports all over Spanish America (including those in Chile).

South of the Atacama, production was much less centralized, the province of small producers whose aguardiente went largely to the regional market. Like the Peruvian product, it was shipped in clay, but by the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century some producers appear to have begun first resting some of their production in tanks made of the fairly neutral rauli (a type of southern beech) from the forested south of the country. (In Chile’s south, producers, of whom there were increasingly many, drew on the country’s growing cooperage industry to both store and ship their aguardiente in rauli casks.)

Peru and Chile secured their independence in the 1820s. By then the “aguardiente de Pisco” shipped from that port had begun to gain a reputation, and a market, beyond Latin America—in 1826, a lonely “jar of Pisco de Italia” even made it as far as Liverpool. It is at this point that we first see its name consistently abbreviated to “pisco,” mostly by people not from the region. This is almost always confirmable as the Peruvian product. But the tapped “barrel of Pisco” an American woman found in her hotel room in Concepción, in southern Chile, in 1826 gives one pause. It is possible that it was the Peruvian spirit, imported into Chile in a barrel or subsequently racked into one, but the Peruvian industry was not known for using barrels, and there are other early examples of barreled “pisco” associated with Chile. This raises the possibility that, at least as far as foreign travelers were concerned, “pisco” had already become the all-purpose name for the aguardientes distilled on the West Coast of South America.

Then came the California Gold Rush and the huge market for spirits it created: pisco was readily available and became popular in San Francisco and the inland mining regions. What the miners in California liked was Pisco Punch, made with something called “pisco de Italia” (or sometimes “Italian pisco”), which was, as a local newspaper put it in 1864, “a variety of brandy made from grapes in Pisco, Peru” that came in “earthen bottles or jars of an oval form, containing 2 ½ to 3 gallons [10–12 liters] each.” See Pisco Punch. Yet Chilean aguardiente was also brought into the city, in barrels and jars, although one never finds records of it being actually drunk. By far the majority of what the miners actually drank was no doubt Peruvian, but the situation seems to be like that with Armagnac in America at the time, where shipping records show barrels of it being landed but one only finds “cognac” served in bars. There were no truth-in-labeling laws at the time.

While Peruvian producers such as Don Domingo Elias, who owned most of the vineyards in the plain of Pisco, exported as much pisco as they could, the industry in Chile was in the midst of an agricultural and technological revolution that saw huge amounts of aguardiente being made in the country’s central zone, dwarfing what was made in the traditional regions in the north. A good deal of this was made with modern steam distillation, from recently imported European varietals, and aged in barrels, on the French model. See coñac. But much of it was aimed at the internal market for clear aguardientes, and indeed some of the producers—all from the central zone—who entered the 1872 Chilean Exposition of Arts and Industries explicitly identified their product as “pisco.”

Whether it was this domestic pressure that caused the traditional producers in the north to begin explicitly labeling their product as “pisco” or if it was a reaction to how it was being sold in the United States, by the 1880s the traditional producers in Coquimbo and Atacama were claiming “pisco” as theirs and concertedly bottling their product as such. In 1931, this was made official, with a regulation limiting pisco to those provinces.

Meanwhile, the industry in Peru was under threat as well, as cañazo, Peru’s local cane spirit—increasingly plentiful and very cheap—ate deeply into its domestic market. See cane-based spirits. American Prohibition added a near-fatal blow when it took away one of the major foreign markets (ironically, the other was in Chile). The late twentieth century was difficult in both countries, with dictatorships, land redistribution, and political unrest. Eventually, due to its overwhelming share of the domestic market, the Chilean industry came out in robust shape, if greatly consolidated. Today, the country’s twenty producers make some 35 million liters of pisco a year, compared to the 7.5 million liters made by Peru’s four hundred producers. In fact, the Peruvian industry was nearly destroyed in the 1970s but has seen a remarkable recovery in the last twenty years and dominates foreign sales (Peruvian producers such as BarSol, Macchu Pisco, Porton, and Campo de Encanto were early and enthusiastic participants in the modern cocktail renaissance). See cocktail renaissance.

Today both industries are tightly regulated. Both control the grapes used: Peru allows eight varietals and Chile thirteen (only five are in common use), in each case a mix of aromatic and non-aromatic varietals. Both make piscos from single varietals and ones that are “acholado”—a mix of aromatic and non-aromatic grapes. Both control distillation: in Peru, pisco must be the product of a single distillation in a pot still (mostly alembics are used, although some falcas remain), run into the tails until bottling proof is reached. No water may be added. Chile specifies alembic distillation as well, which must be non-continuous, but in practice allows the pot stills to be connected to short, Armagnac-style rectifying columns that can be used to clean up part of the run. As with most spirits, the result is diluted to bottling proof. Peruvian pisco cannot be aged in wood; Chilean pisco can be but usually isn’t. Peru allows a “mosto verde” style, distilled from partially fermented grape must and very aromatic. Chile allows an “artisanal” style, distilled on the crushed grapes and often rested in rauli tanks. The past few years have seen a proliferation of artisanal piscos, many of them from new producers.

Both countries make truly excellent piscos, rich-textured, clean, and headily aromatic. If a Peruvian pisco is disappointing, it is usually because it is hot or roughly distilled. If a Chilean one fails to measure up, it is usually because it is thin and bland. Fortunately, in each case such spirits are easy to avoid.

pisco

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