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Pisco / Feature Articles

“Pisco Punch”, a drink made with Pisco, the fine Peruvian liquor whose ingredients, according to English writer Rudyard Kipling included “cherub wings’ dust”, has been rediscovered a century after it reigned in San Francisco bars.

The story of this cocktail, as well as the original recipe kept secret for decades, has been rescued by Peruvian Guillermo Toro-Lira, who narrates all the details of this surprising and passionate investigation in his book “Cherub Wings”.

Near the end of the 90’s, Toro-Lira decided to write a book about the story of Peruvians in California. And in 2001 he found an article about Pisco Punch.

The author, who lives in the Californian city Sunnyvale, began an investigation through documentaries and bibliographies that, after five years, gave him enough material to write three books.

“Cherub Wings”, the first of them, has been published in Lima as a “fictionized chronicle” that recounts the importance that Peru had in the origins of San Francisco, a city that in 1839 had already received its first shipment of Peruvian Pisco.

Toro-Lira says that this bond was “very strong” during the XIXth century “particularly thanks to communication, as Lima was relatively closer to San Francisco than the capital of Mexico”.

“Near 1800, Lima was the largest city on the coast of the Pacific…there were supplies of all kinds,” he highlighted.

This reached the point that ‘even the first person to construct a house in San Francisco, an Englishman whose last name was Richardson, went all the way to Lima to bring materials,’ he added.

Toro-Lira has also found engravings and drawings that show people wearing ponchos and chullos (hats made of vicuña wool) and tell coins of small value called Reales, and of people eating charqui (dry salty meat), like in Peru.

“There were Peruvian companies that brought charqui to Monterrey, California, made of cow’s meat. It became so popular that the word ‘jerky,’ which we use nowadays, comes from charqui turned to English”, he gave as an example.

Toro-Lira adds that “unfortunately not much of that has remained, but what has been saved is the story of Pisco Punch.”

His investigation allowed him to become acquainted with the drink that was created by a man known as ‘Pisco John’, who served it at the ‘Bank Exchange’, a bar owned by Duncan Nicol in 1900.

“What I confirmed is that ‘Pisco John’ was Duncan Nicol. I am very proud, because it took us a long time to find the recipe, but we are 100% sure that we have found the original formula that became so famous”, he says.

The author defines the drink as “basically a lemonade that hides Pisco by using syrups derived mainly from fruit, to which you add ‘goma arabiga’, pineapple and Pisco of the aromatic Italia variety.”

During his investigation, Toro-Lira found valuable documents that, according to him, confirm Pisco’s Peruvian origin through sources considered “completely unbiased.”

“The result of my investigation arrives at the definite conclusion that the first liquor in the world called Pisco was made and transported from the city of Pisco, Ica in Peru,” he points out.

The first large cargo of this liquor, which was also was praised by North-American writer Herman Melville, arrived in San Francisco between 1830 and 1840—that has been determined from the ads published in the newspapers of that era.

The writer also found some famous canons in this city that were fabricated in the port of Callao, and has studied the presence of Peruvians during the famous ‘Gold Rush’.

Toro-Lira retells his findings on his website (www.piscopunch.com) and promises to soon publish a book about the first person to drink Pisco in the history of California that, according to him, “is a very famous person.”