The Peruvian ambassador in Belgium, Gonzalo Gutiérrez, published a study called “Pisco Elqui, the deceptive name” where he describes the very long fight the country has gone through to defend the denomination of origin of its national drink: The Pisco Sour.
According to him, as El Comercio explained in an article, this fight goes back all the way to the times of the Dry Law in the United States, which equals to decades of needed clarification.
“Peru has permanently defended the Peruvianness of the Pisco appellation of origin. Proof of this are the diplomatic notes of the Embassy of Peru in the United States, in the 1930s, where the exclusive right of Peru is reaffirmed”, Gutiérrez told El Comercio.
In his study, he also gives account for the efforts that Peru initiated just after the Congress of the United States approved “the XXI Constitutional Amendment, which annulled the 1919 prohibition and allowed free production, trade and consumption again of alcoholic beverages”, he informed.
It was not until the end of the XIX century that the Peruvian Pisco appeared in the bars of San Francisco with the Pisco Punch, just before the Dry Law began.
Gutierrez notes that once the ban was completed, the United States sought to establish with Peru “new arrangements that would allow better access for Peruvian exports to North America and among them to resume the important flow of pisco exports that arrived before the ban, especially in California,” reads the article of El Comercio.
After alcoholic beverages were once again allowed in the United States, products that intended to use Peru’s denomination of origin began to enter the North American market.
It has been 85 years since this Pisco defense began and today there are already 70 countries that recognize Peru as the Pisco designation of origin.
