The Pisco

Pisco is a unique brandy of grape made from a kind of grape that can only be found in Peru; This brandy of grape is one of a kind because, it is produce with the pure juice of the grape, without any softener like water, ones the grape had been distillate for first time the level of alcohol goes until 75 degrees, after repeating the process again and again, this brandy set it right level of alcohol in 43 degrees.

The imagination of the inca people and the spaniard grape are the main ingredients of this brandy; It start to be produce over 400 years ago and exported to Europe as an exquisite drink, the extraordinary smell and taste  make it highly paid by the European aristocracy.

The name of this brandy of grape comes from the word Pisku, that mean bird; It was made for first time by the Piskus, who were people that use to live on the south coast of Peru, this people got the name piskus, because they use to live in an area full of sea birds; The piskus had great pottery skills, so they create a large, conical container to ferment the inca beer; Today, this type of containers are know with the name of aryballos.

The aryballos containers that the piskus made, start to be use by the spaniards to ferment grape, so the pisku people copy the procedure of grape fermenting and add their own ideas, years after the resulting drink invention of the piskus adopt their name, so the pisku was born; Decades after the name of pisku, change into pisco; The city and even the region of Peru where all this happened is call pisco.

Well, now you know that this drink was invented in Peru; Few years ago, as amazing as it sounds,the Peruvian government and the Chilean government had a legal battle about the real ownership of the Peruvian brandy of grape; All this happened because a Chilean business man, wrote an international patent saying that the Peruvian brandy of grape was invented in Chile.

How is this possible? Let me explain; Over a hundred years ago, Lima city had an hotel own by a Chilean, the hotel had a bar where an American guest want to drink a whiskey sour; The problem begun because the bar tender did not have any whiskey in the bar, so the bar tender suggest to the guest to use the Pisco Brandy of Grape instead of the whiskey; The guess accept the drink and then the bar and the hotel became popular because the new cocktail.

Obviously the new cocktail was call pisco-sour, they had such success with it, that it was exported all over the world; After that moment the Chilean owner of the hotel, made an international patent, saying that the drink was originally from Chile; Getting the drink and the idea under his name, with the protection of the Chilean government.

The Chilean government in order to back up the story of the ownership, change the name of towns, grow a similar variety of grape like in Peru and build a full Chilean national identity around this drink; Today after 100 years of legal fights within Peru and Chile, the international authorities finally gave the legal ownership of the brandy of grape to Peru.

The ownership is the biggest symbol of national identity for the Peruvians; The Peruvian government celebrate the ownership with a request to the international glass maker company Riedel, with the design and manufacture of a special glass to drink pisco; The result is a marvelous tulip shaped small glass, that presents this delicious drink with all it greatness to the world.

See Roads of Pisco Tours

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