Living in Peru : your everyday companion

Food & Pisco

Food < Features | Restaurants in Peru | Share a Recipe| Glossary | Recipes | Suggest a Restaurant | Top 20 Restaurants

Pisco / Feature Articles

Well here we are wrapping up another banner year with Pisco.  We have even finished up the year hitting the 1 million Dollar mark in Pisco exports!  Onward and upward.

He is a great little article from Canada giving a concise summary about Peruvian Pisco.

Cheers!
Hans

PS
For those of you who will be receiving the new year in Cusco, make sure you stop in to have a toast with us at the “El Pisquerito”.

Pisco or grape brandly is a miracle born from the fertile Peruvian desert and the mixture of Indians and Spaniards. More than four centuries ago, peculiar soil, climate, culture and history bred a grapevariety that adapted to a land at once millennial and promising, and gave rise to a new spirit of world renown. Like the citated of Machu Picchu or the starry nights above the Nasca Lines, pisco has become a symbol to expatriate Peruvians and with which we identify. Pisco is an unparalleled fragrance and taste where Peruvians meet, and a magical place of our culture we invite you to tour with us from the following text.
 
The True Story
Few words are so intimately linked to Peruvian identity and history as is 'pisco', a Quechua term meaning 'little bird'. Nowadays a component in many ethnic family and town names, the word was used to designate an old civilization of Paracas origin overwhelmed by the Incas and whose roots were found in a valley populated by abundant coastal birds near the shores of an immensely rich sea. When they descended to conquer the coastal lowlands, the Incas found a place on the condor's flight path from the Andes to the sea which they called Valley of the Condor. Not much later however, the conquered groups changed the name to Pisco making reference to the large avian population typical of the area. By the time the Spaniards arrived, the Pisco tribe had mastered the making of cone-shaped pots in which they prepared 'chicha' and other alcoholic beverages which were also called pisco. When the Spaniards brought grape-vines, the Indian word pisco came to mean grape brandy. By the end of the XVI century, Peruvian maps included Pisco as the name of the port from where the brandy was shipped. Production of casks, wines and brandies started before 1560 and eventually became the predominant economic activity in the mid-central coastal region. Casks, full or empty, were used as a means of payment to buy houses, land, and slaves, to pay titles and for dowries. Already in 1630, Peru exported through Pisco and Nasca approximately 20 million liters of grape brandy. In those times, lands were irrigated from the plentiful water tables under the coastal region and using sophisticated irrigation systems typical of civilizations from Inca times whose complex social structure and their search for excellence in agriculture have survived to our days. Many plants such as the potato, tomato, pumpkin and beans, which are staples to present-day mankind were domesticated thanks to this tradition. These old civilization were also successful in adapting foreign produces such as grapes, and used them to create pisco, one of their most exquisite products.QDAT MinChem is located in close proximately to the major shipping port Qingdao in PR China. Their current capacity is 7,500.00 mts of pelletised xanthates. we have entered an agreement another leading manufacturer provide 4,000 mts pelletised xanthates to complement our own with production .

True pisco
How to tell true Pisco
Like any other spirit, true pisco can be told by its fragrance and taste. However, a test known as 'rope and rose' is a simple means to determine quality that can be used by either the connoisseur or the occasional drinker. By shaking a bottle of quality pisco in circles, a viscous formation will appear spinning in a whirlwind along the bottle's vertical axis. The column of bubbles is the so called 'rope' while the bubbles on top form the 'rose'.

Pisco manufacturing
True Peruvian pisco can be differentiated from other foreign grape brandies by three characteristics. In the first place, Peruvian pisco is distilled from fresh new wine especially selected for the making of pisco, as opposed to those brandies made from new wine with several months' fermenting or from old wines. Next, pisco is distilled in stop-and-go stills as opposed to continuous stills which rectify and discard many elements that characterize true pisco. Third is that alcohol content is never reduced by adding water after distillation. Peruvian pisco stills must comply with regulations from the Supervisory Commission on Technical Norms, Metrology, Quality Control and Non-Tariff Barriers of the National Institute for the Defense of Consumers and Intellectual Property (INDECOVI). This agency determines and oversees compliance with manufacturing standards. -; As a consequence of guaranteed distillation and non- rectification of pisco, the resulting product maintains the typical sensory characteristics that come from natural impurities which are volatilized during distillation. Pisco thus produced must be either transparent or slightly amber-colored, and include ethyl alcohol, volatile acids, ethers, aldehydes and higher alcohols, while pure alcohol content fluctuates around 42* GL.

Pisco varieties
An additional difference between Peruvian piscos and foreign grape brandies is that raw materials for either domestic or factory pisco making are not exclusively scented muscatel varieties. "; In fact, in ma- king pisco taste is favored over fragrance and, therefore, the grapes used are mainly of the local Quebranta variety and, to a lesser extent, the Common Black and Mollar non-fragrant varieties. INDECOPI'S technical standards list four pisco varieties by manufacturing process or raw materials used:

•    Pure pisco made from non fragrant grape varieties such as Quebranta, Common Black or Mollar.
•    Fragrant pisco made from Muscatel, Italy or Albilla grapes.
•    Green pisco, a highly favored kind made from partially fermented cultures.
•    Creole ('acholado') pisco made from a mix of grape cultures.
Additionally, 'scented' pisco made fragrant during the fermentation or distillation stages, and 'macerated' pisco to which fig, mango, cherry, lemon or 'chirimoya' (custard apple) flavors are added after fermentation are also produced in Peru, although exclusively for local consumption.

A Pisco Recipe Book
Like vodka to Russians and tequila to Mexicans, pisco is part of the Peruvian heritage. For centuries, Peruvian families nurtured inventiveness which coupled with Peruvian grape brandy's versatility resulted in a varied recipe book of pisco drinks among which 'pisco sour' is the best known worldwide.

COCKTAIL
PISCO SOUR
1 cup Quebranta pisco
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/3 cup white sugar

Method:
put ingredients in blender. Add a little egg white and 6 ice cubes.Pour. Sprinkle a few drops bitter orsome ground cinnamon.

CAPITAN (CAPTAIN)
1/2 cup pisco
1/2 cup red vermouth

Method:
mix and add ice.

COCTEL DE ALGARROBINA
(CAROB COCKTAIL)
3 cups pisco
1 cup carob syrup
1 cup sweet condensed
2 egg yolks

Method:
shake ingredients with some ice cubes. Pour. Sprinkle with ground cinnamon.
LONG DRINKS
CANARIO (CANARY)
1 cup pisco
1/2 orange juice
Method:
mix and add ice.

Derechos Reservados de PROMPERU, con permiso del Consulado General del Perúen Vancouver, B.C. Canadá.

Original article can be seen at : http://pbav.homestead.com/files/pisco.html