What is Pisco Punch?

Pisco Punch is a punch made with Peruvian Pisco brandy, very popular in San Franscisco, California, at the end of the 1800s and beginning of the 1900s. It was invented with the intention of providing a maximum alcoholic potency, but in the smoothest and in the most subtle possible way.

Historical accounts of the era mention that Pisco Punch:

Is compounded of the shavings of cherubs' wings, the glory of a tropical dawn, the red clouds of sunset, and the fragments of lost epics by dead masters. - Rudyard Kipling , 1889

Will make a gnat fight an elephant. - Pauline Jacobson, 1912

It was like a lemonade, but came back with the kick of a roped steer. - Robert O'Brien, 1948

It was like the scimitar of Harroun whose edge was so fine that after a slash a man walked on unaware that his head had been severed from his body until his knees gave way and he felt to the ground dead. - Oliver Perry Stidger, ca. 1900

The first glass satisfied me that San Francisco was, and is, a nice place to visit. The second glass was sufficient, and I felt I could face small-pox, all fevers known to the faculty, and the Asiatic cholera, combined, if need be. - Thomas W. Knox, 1872

Step into the foyer of the Hotel Cecil in London and inquire in a loud voice the locatioln of 'Pisco John's' and from a dozen throats will come the reply: 'Southeast corner of Montgomery and Washington Streets, San Francisco, America!' - anonymous, ca. 1900

Used to taste like lemonade but had a kick like vodka, or worse - Harold Ross, 1937

In 1919, the bar that served Pisco Punch closed its doors. This was because of the Volstead Act which prohibited the sale of liquor in the U.S. In 1926, the creator of the punch dies and for many long years historians thought he took the recipe with him. The book Wings of Cherubs proves that was not the case.

To try “original recipe pisco punch” visit Pisco Latin Lounge in San Francisco www.piscosf.com.'