Andean South America stretches from the very northern end of the continent to the very southern one, with the mountains beginning in Venezuela and running through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia before ending at the southern tips of Chile and Argentina. The region is primarily known for pisco, the grape brandy produced in Peru and Chile, but significant amounts of sugar-cane spirits are produced throughout the region along with some agave spirits in Venezuela and Colombia and a range of European-style aperitifs and digestives in Argentina and, to a lesser extent, Chile. See
Unlike in Central America, there is broad agreement that distillation only came into South America after 1532, when the Spanish began their invasion and destruction of the Inca Empire. Along with the Spanish settlers came the “frutos de Castilla,” as they labeled the package of Iberian crops with which they intended to replace, or at least supplant, the “frutos de tierra”—the local crops. Along with such staples as wheat and the olive, these included the mission or listán prieto grape, which was planted widely in what is now Peru and Bolivia in the late 1530s and 1540s (with the creation of the Viceroyalty of Peru in 1542, Spain folded all of Andean America, or at least all the parts that it controlled, under one administration, centered in Lima). As Spanish rule extended to the coastal region south of the large and arid Atacama desert (1540) and the eastern slopes of the Andes (1573), so did the vine.
We do not know exactly when or where distillation began in the viceroyalty (records are scarce), but the two earliest known mentions of stills in the region—one in Santiago and the other in Ica, now the heart of Peru’s pisco industry—are connected to wineries, and they show that making brandy, or pomace brandy, was a standard part of viticulture in parts of the viceroyalty by the last quarter of the 1500s, despite a government policy of suppressing distilling. This was designed to protect the monopoly on selling spirits in the Americas it granted, for a hefty price, to Spanish producers. At any rate, by the mid-1600s, grape-based “aguardiente” was in wide production both for local use and for illicit export to other parts of Spanish America. As the different parts of the viceroyalty developed their own cultural identities, this aguardiente evolved as well, into pisco in Peru and Chile, singani in Bolivia, and aguardiente de Catamarca in the Catamarca province of northwestern Argentina, each with its own preferences in grape varietals, distillation, and maturation, but all sharing a great many common characteristics: they are aromatic, floral, and generally undisguised by oak. Each has its idiosyncrasies—the Chileans, for instance, tend to use hybrid stills and do in fact sometimes age their pisco in oak barrels; the Bolivians insist that the moscato de Alejandria grapes for singani must be grown and the spirit distilled at 1,600 meters above sea level or higher; and the Peruvians distill to bottling proof and sometimes use the primitive style of still known as a falca. See pisco.
Along with the frutos de Castilla, the Spanish also included a ringer: sugar cane, an Asian crop that had grown poorly in Spain itself but exceedingly well in Spain’s Atlantic and Caribbean islands. As early as 1549, there were four trapiches—cane mills—operating in Peru. By the end of the century, Peru had a great many large sugar estates, including twenty-three run by the Jesuits alone. At some point after that—here there are even fewer records than for grape distillation—sugar-cane spirits started to be distilled. This seems to have been the province of the enslaved and indentured African and Native American workers and their lower-class European managers, who turned the unwanted skimmings from the pots where cane juice was crystallized (the cachaza) or the juice of canes grown for the purpose into aguardiente de caña. (Molasses was not used at this point, since it belonged to the sugar-mill owners and there was a thriving market for it in Europe.) See rum.
These spirits did not make it into the historical record until the beginning of the 1600s, at which point their use was widespread. By the 1630s, sugar-mill owners had taken notice of them and begun to co-opt and commercialize their manufacture, initiating two centuries of conflict with the colonial authorities. One of the drivers of this trade was the insatiable demand for spirits created by the massive silver mines at Potosi in Bolivia, founded in 1545. By the early 1600s, there were over 50,000 workers there, struggling with the altitude—the mines were 4,000 meters (2.5 miles) up—and the perpetual cold and desperate for the fleeting comfort a swig of raw spirit can give.
By the nineteenth century, cane spirits had become deeply ingrained in the cultures of many South American countries, and they remain that way today. Their variety is dizzying. Some, such as Peru’s cañazo, and guaro, shared by Colombia and Ecuador with various Central American nations, are cane-juice based. See Central America. Some are molasses based and barrel aged (these usually go by ron, or rum). Paraguay’s caña is made from cane syrup, which must be reduced over an open flame; it, too, can be barrel aged. Some of these spirits are flavored with anise, frequently with added sugar. See anise spirits.
Of course, South America is a big place and a very diverse one, with many remote corners with traditions of distilling whatever the land produces, be it grains, manioc, indigenous or introduced fruits, or agave. With the possible exception of Venezuela’s agave-based
Andean South America also has a vibrant tradition of turning spirits into mixed drinks. Punch gained an early foothold there, with ponches of aguardiente (grape- or grain-based) in wide popular use by the eighteenth century, as did egg drinks and heavily spiced variations on the Hot Toddy. See punch and toddy. The region also proved fertile territory for North American–style iced drinks, with “American bars” appearing in its major cities in the last half of the nineteenth century. And not just the major ones: in 1898, a correspondent for the Brooklyn Eagle found Manhattan Cocktails being served at Punta Arenas, at the tip of Patagonia.
Andean South America’s most popular and enduring cocktail creation is, of course, the Pisco Sour, from Lima. See Pisco Sour. Most of the others involve North American–style carbonated soft drinks: Peru’s Chilcano, which dates back to the 1930s, and Bolivia’s Chuflay both use ginger ale. Others use cola, including the Rum and Coca-Cola that was already popular in Venezuela by 1911, Argentina’s Fernet and Cola, Chile’s self-explanatory Piscola. But many of the cities in the region have thriving modern cocktail cultures, some with a long tradition (Buenos Aires and Lima’s involvement with cocktail culture are particularly significant), and it is easy to find state of the art mixology being practiced there.
“City of the Magellans.” Brooklyn Eagle, October 30, 1898, 15.
Giovannoni, Tato. Cocteleria argentino. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2014.
Mix, Ivy. Spirits of Latin America. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed, 2020.
Pierce, Gretchen, and Áurea Toxqui, eds. Alcohol in Latin America. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2014.
By: David Wondrich