Prologue

Ceviche. Guinea pig. Corn-and-potato cream soup. Impossibly large fava beans. Lamb sautéed with wildberries in its own juice. Cuisine from Peru is a singular blend of European, Andean and Asian influences that mirrors a culture unlike any other in the Americas. And what better way to wet your whistle than with the ne plus ultra of Peruvian drinks, a Pisco Sour.

Pisco Sour, you say? But isn’t this a book about Pisco Punch? Yes it is, but let me explain. The former, invented in Lima during the 1920s by an ex-pat American barman, is an egg-white concoction not unlike America’s Gin Fizz but made with the brandy of Peru’s ubiquitous grape, the pisco. Pisco Punch, a clear drink also made with the brandy, is another matter. Its heyday was a century ago in San Francisco, but because the recipe was lost with the death of its inventor in 1926, the drink became extinct.

In this book, Guillermo Toro-Lira resurrects Pisco Punch with the creativity and zeal of a religious convert. His tale is part Sam Spade mystery, part Borges hallucination, part Michener novel, part scholarly history, part psychoanalysis, part diary, part comedy, and wholly original. Pisco Punch is the core protagonist in this broad, heartfelt, often leapfrogging account of how San Francisco came into being as a cosmopolitan American city and stayed that way. Mr. Toro-Lira gets beneath the skin of Mark Twain’s drinking habits, Latin Americans rushing for gold, Junipero Serra’s missions, Peruvian navigator Don Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, pre-Columbian agriculture, and much more. His alluring maps, charts, photos and superimposed images fuse the past with the present and the familiar with the exotic. Then there’s the mystery of the bartender…But enough! I don’t want to give the story away!

As told by Mr. Toro-Lira, a Peruvian who has long resided near San Francisco, the presence of Peru was no small factor in the city’s early history. Indeed, my own ancestor Domingo Ghirardelli, after leaving Italy in the 1830s, first prospered as a confectioner in Lima before moving his Peruvian wife and family to San Francisco, where he launched the chocolate business we know today in 1852.

I love San Francisco. This is not just for the obvious reasons of how beautiful and cosmopolitan it is, but because San Franciscans seem so marvelously pleasure-bound. They have the food, the wine, the user-friendly weather, the creative opera, the espresso cafés, and the “boutique” chocolates (and that’s for starters). How natural and perfect, then, that a drink like Pisco Punch should arise and thrive in the City-by-the-Bay, a metropolis so intoxicating, to paraphrase a jazz song, that even people who don’t indulge in alcohol feel a bit woozy there. The labor of love that follows bears witness to a great city, a great drink, and a great way to be. Long live pleasure.

SIDNEY LAWRENCE
Washington, DC