Peruvian drinking

As I mentioned in my previous ode to Pisco we rather fell of the wagon going around Peru, against all of our better plans.

Once we let pisco into our lives we wondered what other alcohol and beverages in general the Peruvians had we didn't know about.

Beer was an obvious thing to try, all through Bolivia and Peru each city had its own local lager. The names of these were things like pasceña (La Paz, also slang for a girl from La Paz), cusqueña (cusco) and arequipeña (arequipa). As you can see the start of each name denotes the city and the end of the name is apparently a colloquial way of saying "from the city of".

I tried most of these beers and found pretty much all of them were more than acceptable lagers although my judgment may be clouded by too much drinking fosters and carling as a young adult (all the ones i mentioned were certainly vastly superior to both these abominations).

As well as brewing from barley the Peruvians have been making drinks from corn at least since inca times, and probably much before that.

Some of these drinks are called chicha, of which we found a couple of types, which are quite different.

The first was Chica Morada, this is made from the red maize and contains no alcohol (but quite a bit of sugar). It looks a lot like ribena and probably tastes a little like it (although how much of that is because I associated the colour with ribena is still a grey area). It has become a favourite with both me and fiancée when we don't want water.

Chica De jora is a different matter. This was apparently a drink used by the inca priests. It is a cloudy grey in colour and tastes a lot more like you imagine fermented maize to taste like. There can be a lot of alcohol present depending on the brew and at restaurants you're not really sure how much as it just comes in a glass (in some cases they brew it themselves). The version we tried was very filling, with what I imagine quite a bit of crushed maize floating in suspension in it. I certainly think that drinking it with a big meal (as I did) was a mistake.

The final drink which is a Peruvian curiosity is Inka kola. This is the only local drink which continued to outsell coke once it had been launched in a country, and judging by the locals it is still their drink of choice. As you'd expect from coca-cola coming second isn't something they do well and so they bought the recipe and naming rights to the inka version and now they make and distribute it.

After seeing it everywhere I finally decided to give it a go and can tell you that it is basically iron bru but without the neon orange colour, a far more urine like yellow (it still has the unmissable glow of tartrazine).

Peruvian drink, like Peruvian food, is full of diversity and surprises. Even the Peruvian wine that doesn't make it into pisco is actually quite drinkable (although the Peruvian restaurants mainly serve Chillean and Argentinian wines).

Ode to the Pisco Sour

In Peru we had a definite plan to lay off the booze, mainly because we thought it would be the best way to keep the weight off while we travelled.

Sadly this went the way of the dodo fairly rapidly in Peru, mainly because they love a good drink. The one thing in favour of my waistline is that at over 3000m getting drunk doesn't take much booze!

For the most part our downfall was based on pisco, which is a Peruvian specialty, a friend of my fiancée told us we had to try it so once in Puno we headed to a cocktail bar (pacha mixology bar on the main drag in Puno) at the time this seemed like a great find, the pisco sour we had was excellent and we recommended it to several friends, we also went there with a couple we met on our tour of Uros and sillustani, and with them tried to split a giant pisco sour between the four of us using only straws and science (they did give us a spoon but syphoning it using the straws seemed like way more fun!). I have included a picture of pacha's giant cocktail version below.

The pisco sour is a great cocktail for people who aren't keen on sweet things and who like their cocktail with a kick, we've drunk it in many bars and restaurants and as yet no-one has messed up the drink of pisco, lemon juice, sugar syrup, egg white and ice blended together. I have drunk one or two cocktails in my time and I haven't really got anything that I can compare it to.

Once in cusco we learnt a bit more about pisco itself at "the pisco museum" (10% museum, 90%. Cocktail bar), which is not far from the plaza de armas.

The drink is brewed by distilling fermented grape juice the discarding the head (the very strong initial distillate) and the tail (the dregs at the end) there are many different types (most of which are available at the pisco museum) ranging from pisco puro (single grape variety) to a pisco blended from many different grape types.

Apparently this came about because the Spanish only wanted the Peruvians to produce enough wine for their church communion and not much else. In the past there were up to 200,000 hectares of vines dedicated to pisco but this fell to around 10,000 at one point. However pisco is making a comeback and right now apparently there are between 25 and 40 thousand hectares devoted to its production.

The pisco museum has many different pisco cocktails as well as the traditional sour, all of which looked excellent however the best alternative to the traditional sour we found was a drink from the colca canyon called the Colca Sour. Rather than a fancy bar I purchased this at a market, outside a church on the way back from trekking in the colca canyon for 6Soles (1 pound fifty)

This sour changes the traditional Lemon for a round cactus fruit whose name escapes me, inside the fruit looks like a kiwi but to taste (without any booze or sugar syrup) it is incredibly acidic. However when this is put into the cocktail an blended the taste is really amazing.

If I wasn't already carrying a wine glass from a tasting all the way back in Chile in my luggage I would definitely be packing some Pisco for cocktails when we get back to England or Oz. I guess we'll have to hope we an find some where to buy it as it appears to have become my fiancées new favourite drink! You shouldn't visit Peru without giving it a try!