2 ounces pisco
3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice
3/4 ounce pineapple gomme syrup
Optional garnish: a pineapple wedge, pineapple leaves, or a lemon twist
Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker and fill with ice. Shake until well chilled, about 15 seconds, and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish as desired.
In the late 19th century, one cocktail was basically synonymous with San Francisco.
The Pisco Punch.
Pisco, a Peruvian clear grape brandy similar to grappa, was flooding San Francisco’s ports, so it was cheaper and easier to get in than Whiskey. Bars across the city started serving pisco, including 19th century San Francisco’s most famous bar, the Bank Exchange. In the 1870s A Scottish bartender named Duncan Nichols bought the Bank Exchange and he got so famous for serving up Pisco Punch that people started calling him “Pisco John” and even started calling the Bank Exchange “Pisco John’s”.
According to legend, a dying stranger “imparted to him the secret formula of a rare punch that went down as lightly as lemonade and came back with the kick of a roped steer.” The reality is that Nichols probably inherited the recipe from the bar’s previous owners. The legend persisted though, because he was the only person in the bar who knew the recipe and wouldn’t let anyone watch as he made batches in secret in the cellar.
When the bar was closed by Prohibition in 1920, people begged Nichols for the recipe, but he wouldn’t budge. Unfortunately, he passed away in 1926 at the age of 72, and took the recipe with him to the grave, and people thought the Pisco Punch was gone forever.
Fortunately, in 1964 a historian was researching a book when he accidentally discovered a letter written by the manager of the Bank Exchange just before Prohibition. It seems that the manager had been carefully watching which ingredients were coming into the bar, and secretly spying on Nichols as he made the punch.
Along with Pisco, sugar, lemon, & pineapple, the recipe’s key ingredient is gum arabic, an emulsifier that prevents sugar syrups from crystallizing. In this cocktail it adds a silky smooth texture that elevates it from a boozy lemonade to the stuff of legend.