Happy National Pisco Sour Day!

Let’s everyone raise a glass to toast Peru’s signature cocktail on this first Saturday of February: National Pisco Sour day.

It was expat American Victor V. Morris who is now generally acknowledged as having invented the ingeniously delectable concoction of pisco grape spirits, Peruvian lime juice, sugar syrup, egg white and a dash of bitters.

The history of  Morris’ bar can be found in articles by historian Guillermo L. Toro-Lira, posted on the piscopunch.com Web site. The bar was a favorite watering hole for a who’s who of  archaeologists, aviators, journalists, diplomats and politicians between 1916 and 1929.

The names jump off the pages of  the MORRIS’ BAR VISITORS REGISTER, found just a few years ago by Morris’ grandson, Michael Morris:

Rafael Larco Hoyle, founder of the Museum Rafael Larco Herrera, Alfred Louis Kroeber, cultural anthropologist  from the University of California Berkeley who worked with Julio C. Tello (and the father of Ursula le Guin); Roger W. Straus, a millionaire and president of board of directors of the American Smelting Company; Elmer Faucett, founder of the Faucett Airline Company; José R. Lindley and son, makers of soda beverages and future creators of Inca Kola; Juan Ramón Montero, the first aviator to fly from Lima to Pisco; newspaperman C.N. Griffis, director of the West Coast Leader and founder of  the Andean Air Mail & PERUVIAN TIMES, among others.

Scholars, adventurers and rogues alike partook in the earliest version of the iconic alcoholic beverage, now so ubiquitous throughout Peru.

Gen. Dean Ivan Lamb, an aviation pioneer and infamous soldier of fortune, discovered Pisco sours in the Morris Bar in 1922.

“I  never learned what the liquid was derived from, but from personal experience believe it a triple distillation of  nitroglycerin,” he later recalled in his memoir, The incurable filibuster.

“In Morris’ Bar I ordered a pisco sour. It tasted like a pleasant soft drink and I ordered another, to which the bartender  objected informing me that one was usually sufficient. After an argument he made another — from that time events were not  very clear but I have hazy recollections of an argument about another one, something of a fight in a Chinese restaurant,  police, soldiers, more battles and crowds of people; waking in the hotel with a guard of soldiers holding off people with  bills for damages.”

Lamb scrammed out of town and headed for higher ground, at the urging of Augusto Leguía Jr., the eldest son of Peru’s then-authoritarian president. Lamb arrived by rail to Puno, two miles above sea level on the shores of Lake Titicaca, and quickly succumbed to soroche mountain sickness.

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“The high altitudes interfered with my drinking, so I went over to Buenos Aires on the coast.” Lamb told the Brooklyn Daily Eagle Newspaper in 1928.

The pisco sour  is a source of patriotic fervor and a perennial point of contention in the country’s strained relationship with its southern neighbor Chile.

Peru is the birthplace of the pisco grape spirits, named after the Peruvian coastal town of Pisco. Peru also lays claim to the pisco sour. Chile disputes these bragging rights, and contends Pisco originated on its soil.

Neither country has a sense of humor about the issue. As an example, the Peruvian customs form warns “any drink with the name “pisco” that does not originate from Peru, will be confiscated.”

The recipe for the drink is a simple matter of ratios:

3 parts pisco
2 parts sugar syrup
1 part lime juice (If you are in the United States, use key limes.)

Add an egg white and a cup of ice and blend. The result is a frothy white foam on top, with a lime tinged yellow concoction underneath. A few drops of Angostura bitters complete the drink. It’s a bracing start to a long, relaxing lunch, or a wind-down drink at the end of the day.

Pisco (that is to say, real Peruvian pisco, not the inferior swill exported by Chile) can be hard to find outside of Peru, so if you fall for this cocktail, don’t forget to pick up a bottle or two at duty free once you’ve gone through immigration for your flight home.

Note: Pisco is a distilled spirit, not a brandy because it is not stored in wood casks. Real pisco is stored in traditional mud-ceramic containers called “botijas” or in glass jugs.

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