Boozehound (25 page)

We stayed at the oasis of Huacachina, an old resort filled with dune buggies and backpackers. It was weird, sort of like a cross between a hippie ski town and Mos Eisley, with sandboarders instead of skiers and dune buggy drivers who drove like Han Solo. As we sat in a café, we watched one dune buggy driver skid down the dirt street. “You don’t want that guy to take you up into the mountains,” said the guy at the café. “He’s a drunk.”

Huacachina is said to be haunted by a witch in the middle of the lagoon who eats men at night. At least one man goes missing every year, according to legend. At night, one of my traveling companions wandered alone down to the water and claimed—totally freaking out—to have seen the witch. The jury is out on whether that sighting was pisco related. Perhaps it stemmed from excessive consumption of a coca leaf–infused pisco? Anyway, the freak-out was ill-timed, since we were expected at a house party in Ica. So I asked the Peruvian distiller, Romero, to reassure our friend that the witch was simply a myth. “But it’s true,” Romero insisted.

“Are you serious?” I said.

“Yes, it’s true.”

“Okaaay,” I said. I tried a different approach. “Well, one man goes missing every year, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, has anyone gone missing yet this year?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” I reasoned, “if one man has already gone missing, if the witch already has her quota, then you can reassure our friend that he won’t go missing.”

We finally did get to the house party in Ica, actually a birthday party for the seventy-year-old mother of the team’s Peruvian business partner. A band played and several bottles of pisco were passed around. However, only one glass was passed around for thirty people. No matter where we went—house parties, bars, distilleries—and no matter how many people we were with—four, twelve, thirty, fifty—we were only ever provided one shot glass. The tradition, in Peru, is that you pour yourself a little pisco from the bottle, pass it to the next person, take your shot, then pass the glass. I don’t care how popular pisco becomes in the States, that is one Peruvian custom that will definitely not make the leap north. Regardless, on that night, I filled up my shot glass, and then passed it to my right or to my left, either to a septuagenarian gentleman or his teenage granddaughter. The night ended at a karaoke bar in downtown Ica, where I sang an amazing rendition of Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face.” A video of this actually existed, but, fortunately or unfortunately, the guy who shot the video had his laptop stolen on the bus ride back to Lima. So the world will never know whether or not I have a future as a Lady Gaga impersonator.

Peruvian pisco, it turns out, is just as strange and surprising as ski towns in deserts, drunk dune buggy drivers, thirty people drinking from the same glass, and the calculus of witch sightings. Which means, I guess, that pisco gives us a unique sense of place, a taste that springs from a land and its traditions. (Ding ding ding: paging Señor Terroir!) The spirit is also pretty ancient, with records of the earliest Spanish settlers drinking it in the sixteenth century.

The country has more than three hundred pisco producers, and the diversity of tastes pressed from the odd varietals of desert grapes is staggering. Quebranta—tannic, nonaromatic, and very dry—is the predominant grape, grown along with aromatic varieties such as Italia, Torontel, and even Moscatel. All these grapes make pretty terrible wine. But once distilled and left to rest for a few months, they create a white spirit that’s as complex as a white spirit can be. It’s important that pisco be produced only from the first press of grapes, and not from the skins, stems, and seeds, as is grappa—and as, unfortunately, are many low-quality piscos. Quebranta pisco is labeled
pisco puro;
acholado is a blend of Quebranta and other aromatic grapes and is often more expensive. The dry, nonaromatic Quebranta is the preferred grape of Peruvians; it’s used most in blending, and it’s probably what most Americans have experienced in their pisco sours. But some younger-generation distillers are experimenting with a higher ratio of the aromatic grapes in their acholados.

After dinner one night, our group tasted a single-varietal pisco made from only the Italia grape. The result was a floral digestif with subtle, fruity notes. The Peruvians among us didn’t like it. Many of the Americans, including me, liked it very much. This was a pisco you could enjoy straight, and frankly, it was a better digestif than all but the very best grappas. We suggested that Americans would prefer an acholado with a higher percentage of these aromatics. But that spirit set off a debate that would continue for days. When blending for the American market, should the producer hold true to what a Peruvian connoisseur recognizes as a fine pisco? Or should the acholado reflect what an American palate would recognize as an elegant and approachable distilled spirit? I initially encouraged Romero, Moore, and McDonnell to veer toward the latter with Campo de Encanto. But an event on the last evening of our trip complicated my position in the debate.

That night, the local agricultural university in Ica asked if the group would meet their students and talk about acholado pisco, and perhaps the American palate. All of us were asked to blend our own acholado samples from among single-varietal piscos made from four different grapes. We would then pass our samples around to the students and professors, who would rate them. I relied heavily on the softer, aromatic grapes like Italia and Torontel, and much less on the Quebranta. Each of us was asked to name our pisco—I called mine Iron Eagle.

The students loved my acholado, emptying the first sample quickly. I blended another batch for the professors. The lone female professor came over to me, smiling, to say she liked Iron Eagle. The male professor, however, as well as a guy who was an official judge for the Peruvian pisco authority, did not like my pisco. Nor did Romero, nor did another distiller who was present. The female professor came to Iron Eagle’s defense: “Oh, this is the pisco for me!”

“Face it, dude,” said Jordan Mackay. “Iron Eagle is a chick pisco.”

A Round of Drinks:
Terroir and Cocktails

Once spirits are bottled and shipped from their place of origin, many will eventually fall into the hands of crafty American bartenders. At that point, there’s no telling where, and into which cocktails, they may end up. The following drinks—some traditional, some New Wave—all have traveled quite a ways from their humble
terroir
.

PALOMA

Serves 1

In Mexico, Paloma cocktails are more popular than margaritas, and for good reason: grapefruit flavor mixes perfectly with tequila, better than lime juice alone. A traditional Paloma is made with a grapefruit soda such as Squirt. But this refreshing version calls instead for freshly squeezed white grapefruit juice and club soda, to add fizz
.

3 ounces freshly squeezed white grapefruit juice

2 ounces blanco or silver tequila

½ ounce freshly squeezed lime juice

½ ounce agave nectar

Sea salt, to rim the glass

Club soda

1 lime wheel, for garnish

Fill a cocktail shaker two-thirds full with ice. Add the grapefruit juice, tequila, lime juice, and agave nectar. Shake well and strain into an ice-filled Collins glass rimmed with sea salt. Top with a splash of club soda, and garnish with the lime wheel.

Recipe by Tad Carducci of Tippling Bros., a New York-based consultancy

NOUVEAU CARRÉ

Serves 1

This is an inventive tequila riff on the New Orleans classic Vieux Carré. Añejo tequila is not normally used for mixing; pairing it with herbal-honey Bénédictine and the bright white-wine-and-citrus notes of Lillet Blanc is certainly strange. But somehow those ingredients fit together in this bold and complex cocktail
.

1½ ounces añejo tequila

¾ ounce Bénédictine

¼ ounce Lillet Blanc

2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters

Lemon peel twist, for garnish

Fill a metal cocktail shaker halfway with ice. Add the tequila, Bénédictine, Lillet Blanc, and bitters. Stir until frost forms on the outside of the shaker, then strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with the lemon peel twist.

Recipe by Jonny Raglin of Absinthe Brasserie & Bar, San Francisco

RESTRAINING ORDER

Serves 1

Aperol—a bright orange, low-proof Italian aperitivo—has the uncanny ability to enhance and balance many disparate flavors and make everything taste better, including tequila. In this cocktail, it’s part of an unlikely combination that includes celery bitters. Be sure to use a reposado tequila in this recipe, and do not neglect the garnish; a fat orange peel twist is critical for the right aromatics
.

1 ½ ounces reposado tequila

¾ ounce Aperol

3 or 4 dashes celery bitters

Orange peel twist, for garnish

Fill a mixing glass halfway with ice. Place 2 or 3 large ice cubes in an old-fashioned or rocks glass. Add the tequila, Aperol, and bitters to the mixing glass. Stir vigorously for 20 to 30 seconds, then strain into the glass with the ice cubes. Twist the orange peel over the drink to release its oils, then rub it around the rim of the glass and drop it in.

Recipe by Colin Shearn of Franklin Mortgage & Investment co., Philadelphia

BRASSERIE LEBBE

Serves 1

Eau-de-vie, generally poured as an after-dinner digestif, is challenging in cocktails. But as used here, it makes a cocktail that would be wonderful served earlier, perhaps even as a replacement for the mimosa at brunch. Neyah White of Nopa in San Francisco named the drink after a Belgian producer of
saison
farmhouse ales that have pear and yeasty notes, as this cocktail does. It works best with champagne, rather than other sparkling wines.

¾ ounce pear eau-de-vie

¾ounce Licor 43 or Tuaca

½ ounce freshly squeezed lemon juice

3 ounces dry champagne

Fill a cocktail shaker halfway full with ice. Add the eau-de-vie, Licor 43, and lemon juice. Shake vigorously for 30 seconds, then strain into a champagne flute. Top with the champagne.

Recipe by Neyah White of Nopa, San Francisco

HANS PUNCH UP

Serves 8

This punch, by Adam Bernbach at Proof, is named for a guy Adam got into a fight with one New Year’s Eve. Be sure to use pear eau-de-vie or poire Williams brandy, not pear liqueur; the liqueur would be too sweet for this recipe
.

16 ounces pear eau-de-vie or poire Williams brandy

16 ounces
honey syrup

8 ounces freshly squeezed lemon juice