Destination
Arequipa
The story
The pisco sour is Peru's national cocktail and one of the most-photographed drinks in South American food culture: freshly-squeezed lime juice, sugar syrup, egg white and pisco (the Peruvian grape brandy) shaken hard with ice until foamy, strained into a chilled coupe glass, and topped with 3 dashes of Angostura bitters drawn into a decorative pattern across the top of the pale-yellow foam. Every bar in Lima, every restaurant menu, every hotel welcome-drink from Cusco to Iquitos serves a pisco sour. There's even a national Day of the Pisco Sour on the first Saturday of February.
Method
Combine sugar and water in a small saucepan. Warm over medium heat, stirring, until the sugar dissolves completely. Do not boil. Cool completely. Store in a bottle in the fridge; keeps 2 weeks.
Put the coupe glasses in the freezer for 5 minutes before mixing. Cold glass matters for the presentation.
For each drink: pour the pisco, lime juice, sugar syrup and egg white into a cocktail shaker. Do not add ice yet.
Close the shaker and shake vigorously for 15 seconds without ice. This dry-shake emulsifies the egg white and builds the foam that defines the pisco sour.
Open the shaker, add a good handful of ice, close and shake hard for another 20 to 30 seconds. Shake as hard as you can — the vigour of the shake determines the height of the foam.
Take the chilled coupe glasses from the freezer. Double-strain the cocktail (through the shaker's strainer, then through a fine mesh strainer) into each glass. This removes ice shards and gives a smooth foam surface.
Drop 3 dashes of Angostura bitters onto the foam of each drink — evenly spaced. The bitters will sit on top of the foam.
Using a toothpick or the end of a cocktail stirrer, pull each bitters dash through the foam in a decorative pattern — a swirl, a star, a heart, or three intersecting lines. Serve immediately. Best drunk within 5 minutes.
Tips
- Peruvian pisco, not Chilean. This matters if you want the classical flavour profile. Peruvian pisco is grape brandy made without additives; Chilean pisco is aged and often has caramel colouring. Peruvian pisco puro (single-grape) or acholado (blended) are both correct for pisco sour.
- Fresh lime juice. Bottled lime juice tastes flat. Squeeze the day of drinking.
- Fresh egg white. Pasteurised carton egg white works if you're worried about raw egg, but the foam is slightly less voluminous. Fresh egg from a good source is the classical choice.
- Dry-shake first, then wet-shake. This two-stage shake is what gives you the classical thick foam. Skipping the dry-shake gives you a thinner froth.
- Angostura, not other bitters. The classical Peruvian pisco sour uses Angostura specifically. Peychaud's or orange bitters give you a different flavour.
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