Day 6: Peru, Cusco Pisco Sour Tour

Thanks to booking our trip through a Black Friday sale Exoticca included a Pisco Sour mixology lesson. If you know us, we are not into mixed drinks, so that was not the selling point. In our group of 13, only one other couple booked the same weekend, thus earning the same bonus. With Don not feeling well, we asked Greg if he wanted to take his place. As a content creator (@Go.with.Greg) and bartender, he was interested.

As Ruth, Bill, and I walked over from the
Temple of the Sun tour with another Exoticca escort, I texted Greg the details. He met us at Republica del Pisco. Luis, our bartender and teacher, explained the history of pisco alcohol with enough humor to keep us entertained.

Pisco sours originated in Peru. When the Spaniards invade Peru, they brought grapes with them. They also brought slaves from Africa, and turned the Incans into slaves. In other words, there was a mix of cultures, which means different ways to make food and, in this case, drinks.  The grapes were hidden in jars and placed in the earth where they fermented into alcohol. The name pisco comes from the word piscous, meaning little earth. Or so Luis told us.

There were different variations of the drink. Some early ones were very strong. Personally, I found the version we made to be very strong. The original one was based off of whiskey sours, a drink I have never had. The original pisco sour was 3 oz. pisco plus 1 oz. lime juice plus 1 oz. sugar. 

It was a huge hit. Mario Regit, a young bartender at the time was able to parlay this success into opening his own bar.

The Peruvians knew this was a drink to sip, not one to toss back quickly like a shot. Mario realized he needed to find a way to slow it down, so he added egg white to the mixture. I agree, it sounds icky, but try it. He then added bitters to hide the taste of the egg.

Wikipedia gives a different version of the history.  Sometimes the storytelling is more important than the truth. Since we were sitting at a bar about to make a stiff drink, the details of the origin don't really matter.

Everything is already measured for us, but we are to use the jigger to get the feel of it. 

One key is to have good quality lime juice with phosphate of two to three (instead of the five to six at home). The syrups is just a combination of water and sugar, we were encouraged to make our own at home instead of buying one already made. 

Add six ice cubes to slow the process, and three drops of bitters. 

Going into this, I knew Greg was a bartender. I did not realize Bill has also done some bartending. Luis did not need to help them create the perfect pisco sour. He did come my and Ruth's aid by giving our drinks an extra couple of shakes.

The advice given was to drink it slowly, like a white wine, and (especially in a high altitude like Cusco) drink it slowly with dinner. Chicken, fish, pasta, and salty foods were recommended.

As Bill and Ruth were heading to dinner with much of the rest of our group we did not order food. Greg was there to make sure I found the hotel again. While walking back I spotted a woman selling corn on the cob and immediately bought an ear for $1.50. It was a good excuse to try the local corn on the cob. This Jersey girl still prefers the tinier, sweeter kernels found at home to what I ate on the street (yes, I was toasted enough to buy and eat street food without overthinking it). I'm still glad I tried it, but it would have been better with butter and salt.

Greg and I went back to Basilica, a small restaurant chain in Cusco Don and I had chosen on our first day because it was bright and airy, looked clean, and reminded us of New Jersey diners. Our server, Guadeloupe, was brand new and only spoke a few words in English, about as many Spanish words as we know. She smiled at us with a charmingly innocent look that endeared her to me. We smiled back, pointing to Google translate on our phones and assured her we would figure out the menu. 

I think what Don and I loved most about the restaurant, and the reason we dined there three times in three days, was the background sound track. Ever since I visited my host parents about eight years ago, I've noticed many restaurants in our price range seem to play 80s pop music. It is almost always music from when we went to high school. Basilica took that theme, and gave it a bossa nova twist. As we waited for our meal we hear 99 Red Balloons, Alanis Morrissett's Isn't it Ironic, and others, but in different voices with a beat that reminded us of Bo, Darla, and Rich's Stringzville jams at the Hopewell Train Station. It was both familiar and fresh, a tough combination to create. It was as if Don was with us in spirit. I sent him a text to join us, but he was still not ready to face food.

Ever the gentleman, Greg (who is young enough to be our son), got me back to the hotel. Or rather, with the help of Google Maps, I got him back to the hotel after stopping off at a grocery store to buy more bottles of water. We bought more bottles of water on this trip than I have in several years combined, but better that than getting sick.