A pisco sour is an alcoholic cocktail of Peruvian origin, which is made from pisco, a Peruvian brandy, with sour citrus juice and sweetener components. The Peruvian pisco sour includes Peruvian pisco with freshly squeezed lime juice, simple syrup, ice, egg white, and Angostura bitters. The Chilean version is similar, but has Chilean pisco and Pica lime, and excludes the bitters and egg white. Other variants of the cocktail include with fruits like pineapple or plants such as coca leaves.
Although the preparation of pisco-based mixed beverages possibly dates back to the 1700s, historians and drink experts agree that the cocktail as it is known today was invented in the early 1920s in Lima, the capital of Peru, by the American bartender Victor Vaughen Morris. Morris left the United States in 1903 to work in Cerro de Pasco, a city in central Peru. In 1916, he opened Morris' Bar in Lima, and his saloon quickly became a popular spot for the Peruvian upper class and English-speaking foreigners. The oldest known mentions of the pisco sour are found in newspaper and magazine advertisements, dating to the early 1920s, for Morris and his bar published in Peru and Chile. The pisco sour underwent several changes until Mario Bruiget, a Peruvian bartender working at Morris' Bar, created the modern Peruvian recipe for the cocktail in the latter part of the 1920s by adding Angostura bitters and egg whites to the mix.
Cocktail connoisseurs consider the pisco sour a South American classic. Chile and Peru both claim the pisco sour as their national drink, and each asserts ownership of the cocktail's base liquor—pisco; consequently, the pisco sour has become a significant and oft-debated topic of Latin American popular culture. Media sources and celebrities commenting on the dispute often express their preference for one cocktail version over the other, sometimes just to cause controversy. Some pisco producers have noted that the controversy helps promote interest in the drink. The two kinds of pisco and the two variations in the style of preparing the pisco sour are distinct in both production and taste. Peru celebrates yearly in honor of the cocktail on the first Saturday of February.
Name The term sour refers to mixed drinks containing a base liquor, lemon or lime juice, and a sweetener. Pisco refers to the base liquor used in the cocktail. The word as applied to the alcoholic beverage comes from the Peruvian port of Pisco. In the book Latin America and the Caribbean, historian Olwyn Blouet and political geographer Brian Blouet describe the development of vineyards in early Colonial Peru and how in the second half of the sixteenth century a market for the liquor formed owing to the demand from growing mining settlements in the Andes. Subsequent demand for a stronger drink caused Pisco and the nearby city of Ica to establish distilleries "to make wine into brandy", and the product received the name of the port from where it was distilled and exported.
History Background
The first grapevines were brought to Peru shortly after its conquest by Spain in the 16th century. Spanish chroniclers from the time note the first winemaking in South America took place in the hacienda Marcahuasi of Cuzco. The largest and most prominent vineyards of the 16th and 17th century Americas were established in the Ica valley of south-central Peru. In the 1540s, Bartolomé de Terrazas and Francisco de Carabantes planted vineyards in Peru. Carabantes also established vineyards in Ica, where Spaniards from Andalucia and Extremadura introduced grapevines into Chile.
Already in the 16th century, Spanish settlers in Chile and Peru began producing aguardiente distilled from fermented grapes. Since at least 1764, Peruvian aguardiente was called "pisco" after its port of shipping; the usage of the name "pisco" for aguardiente then spread to Chile. The right to produce and market pisco, still made in Peru and Chile, is the subject of ongoing disputes between the two countries.
According to historian Luciano Revoredo, the preparation of pisco with lime dates as far back as the 18th century. He bases his claim on a source found in the Mercurio Peruano which details the prohibition of aguardiente in Lima's Plaza de toros de Acho, the oldest bullring in the Americas. At this time, the drink was named Punche (Punch), and was sold by slaves. Revoredo further argues this drink served as the predecessor of the Californian pisco punch, invented by Duncan Nicol in the Bank Exchange Bar of San Francisco, California. According to a 1921 news clip from the West Coast Leader, an English-language newspaper from Peru, a saloon in San Francisco's Barbary Coast red-light district was known for its Pisco sours during "the old pre-Volstead days". Culinary expert Duggan McDonnell considers that this attributes the popularity (not origin) of a pisco cocktail in San Francisco dating as far back as before the 1906 earthquake that destroyed the Barbary Coast. A recipe for a pisco-based punch, including egg whites, was found by researcher Nico Vera in the 1903 Peruvian cookbook Manual de Cocina a la Criolla; consequently, McDonnell considers that "[i]t is entirely possible that the 'Cocktail' that came to be the pisco sour ... had been prepared for a reasonable time in Lima before being included in a cookbook."
Origin
The pisco sour originated in Lima, Peru.See:
It was created by bartender Victor Vaughen Morris, an American from a respected Mormon family of Welsh ancestry, who moved to Peru in 1904 to work in a railway company in Cerro de Pasco. Americans emigrated to the bustling Andean mining hub of Cerro de Pasco, then the second-largest city in Peru, for work in the business ventures established by the tycoon Alfred W. McCune. Morris, who worked as a floral shop manager in Salt Lake City, joined McCune's project to construct what was then the highest-altitude railway in the world and ease the city's export of its precious metals. During celebrations for the railway's completion in July 1904, Morris, tasked with overseeing the festivities, recalled first mixing pisco in a cocktail beverage after the nearly 5,000 American and Peruvian attendees (including local celebrities and dignitaries) consumed all of the available whiskey.
Morris relocated to the Peruvian capital, Lima, with his Peruvian wife and three children in 1915. A year later, he opened a saloon—Morris' Bar—which became popular with both the Peruvian upper class and English-speaking foreigners. Morris, who often experimented with new drinks, developed the pisco sour as a variant of the whiskey sour. Chilean historian Gonzalo Vial Correa also attributes the pisco sour's invention to Gringo Morris from the Peruvian Morris Bar, but with the minor difference of naming him William Morris.
Some discrepancy exists on the exact date when Morris created the popular cocktail. Mixologist Dale DeGroff asserts the drink was invented in 1915, but other sources argue this happened in the 1920s.See:
The Chilean web newspaper El Mercurio Online specifically contends historians attribute the year of the drink's invention as 1922, adding that "one night Morris surprised his friends with a new drink he called pisco sour, a formula which mixes the Peruvian pisco with the American sour" (in Spanish: "Una noche Morris sorprendió a sus amigos con una nueva bebida a la que llamó pisco sour, una fórmula que funde lo peruano del pisco con el 'sour' estadounidense.").
The pisco sour's initial recipe was that of a simple cocktail. According to Peruvian researcher Guillermo Toro-Lira, "it is assumed that it was a crude mix of pisco with lime juice and sugar, as was the whiskey sour of those days." (A re-print and modern version of the article; archived from the original on 20 June 2021) As the cocktail's recipe continued to evolve, the bar's registry shows that customers commented on the continuously improving taste of the drink. The modern Peruvian version of the recipe was developed by Mario Bruiget, a Peruvian from Chincha Alta who worked under the apprenticeship of Morris starting on July 16, 1924. Bruiget's recipe added the Angostura bitters and egg whites to the mix. Journalist Erica Duecy writes that Bruiget's innovation added "a silky texture and frothy head" to the cocktail.
Morris used advertisements to promote his bar and invention. The oldest known mention of the pisco sour appears in the September 1920 edition of the Peruvian magazine Hogar. Another old advertisement appears in the April 22, 1921, edition of the Peruvian magazine Mundial. In the magazine, not only is the pisco sour described as a white-colored beverage but its invention is attributed to "Mister Morris." Later, in 1924, with the aid of Morris' friend Nelson Rounsevell, the bar advertised its locale and invention in Valparaíso, Chile. The advertisement featured in the Valparaíso newspaper South Pacific Mail, owned by Rounsevell. By 1927, Morris' Bar had attained widespread notability for its cocktails, particularly the pisco sour. Brad Thomas Parsons writes that "the registry at the Morris Bar was filled with high praise from visitors who raved about the signature drink."
Notable attendees of Morris' Bar included the writers Abraham Valdelomar and José María Eguren, the adventurers Richard Halliburton and Dean Ivan Lamb, the anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, and the businessmen Elmer Faucett and José Lindley. In his memoir, Lamb recalls his experience with the pisco sour in Morris' Bar, commenting that it "tasted like a pleasant soft drink" and that he felt disoriented after drinking a second one despite a bartender's stern objection that "one was usually sufficient."
Spread
Over time, competition from nearby bars and Victor Morris' deteriorating health led to the decline and fall of his enterprise. Due to his worsening constitution, Morris delegated most of the bartending to his employees. Adding to the problem, nearby competitors, such as the Hotel Bolívar and the Country Club Lima Hotel, housed bars that took clientele away from Morris' Bar. Moreover, Toro-Lira discovered that Morris accused four of his former bartenders of intellectual property theft after they left to work in one of these competing establishments. In 1929, Morris declared voluntary bankruptcy and closed his saloon. A few months later, on June 11, Victor Vaughen Morris died of cirrhosis.
Historian Luis Alberto Sánchez writes that, after Morris closed his bar, some of his bartenders left to work in other locales. Bruiget began working as a bartender for the nearby Grand Hotel Maury, where he continued to serve his pisco sour recipe. His success with the drink led local Limean oral tradition to associate the Hotel Maury as the original home of the pisco sour. Sánchez, who in his youth also frequented Morris' Bar, writes in his memoir that two of Morris' other apprentices, Leonidas Cisneros Arteta and Augusto Rodríguez, opened their own bars.
As other former apprentices of Morris found work elsewhere, they also spread the pisco sour recipe. Since at least 1927, pisco sours started being sold in Chile, most notably at the Club de la Unión, a high-class gentlemen's club in downtown Santiago. During the 1930s, the drink made its way into California, reaching bars as far north as the city of San Francisco. Restaurateur Victor Jules Bergeron, Jr., remembers serving pisco sours at the original Trader Vic's tiki bar in Oakland, in 1934, to a traveler who had read about the cocktail in Life magazine. By at least the late 1960s, the cocktail also found its way to New York.