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Peruvian pisco is a grape brandy or aguardiente, distilled from fresh grape
must in stills that do not rectify the final product. Thus
the pisco obtained from the distilling process features is
transparent or slightly yellowish, with an alcohol content
that runs at around 42°.
Pisscu means seagull in Quechua, the Inca language. It was
also the name of a fertile valley often visited by condors
and settled by descendants of the ancient Paracas culture.
Here the local potters, also called piscos, crafted the large
clay jars used to ferment chicha and other alcoholic beverages.
When the Spanish Conquerors arrived in the sixteenth century,
they found this part of the south coast featured the ideal
conditions to plant Mediterranean grape varieties, and were
able to plant them here thanks to the skill and knowledge
of the ancient Peruvians who invented a system of irrigating
the arid coastal desert.
When the Spaniards started distilling, they baptized the grape
brandy "pisco", as well as the port from where it
was shipped, as can be seen from maps dating back to the late
sixteenth century. Pisco exports reached their height between
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Pisco varieties are defined by flavor and not their aroma.
There are four types, according to the ingredient used for
their preparation: pisco puro (made from non-aromatic grapes);
pisco aromático (aromatic); pisco acholado (distilled
from several different grape varieties); and pisco mosto verde
(distilled from grape must that has yet to fully ferment).
Peruvian writings dating back to the nineteenth century state
that drinkers who ordered pisco would "tomar las once",
in a reference to the 11 letters used to spell the word aguardiente.
Peruvian writer Ricardo Palma (1833-1919) writing in his Tradiciones
described pisco as "alborotador quitapesares..."
(a rousing pick-me-up). |
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