El Capitan

Peru's sophisticated answer to the Manhattan, pairing aromatic pisco with sweet vermouth and Angostura bitters, garnished with a green olive.

The El Capitán is Peru's answer to the Manhattan — a stirred, spirit-and-vermouth cocktail of equal or near-equal sophistication built around pisco rather than rye or bourbon. The drink's origin story connects two historical threads: Italy's great wave of emigration to South America in the 1850s and 1860s, which brought sweet vermouth from Turin to Lima alongside the Italian immigrants who imported it, and the Peruvian military culture of the early 20th century. Vermouth arrived in Peru in 1859 when a company called La Casa Teodoro Hart first imported Cinzano Rosso, and within years the combination of the fortified wine with locally produced pisco was discovered by Italian immigrants in Lima, where the cheap equal-parts pour sold for 20 centavos and was known simply as the 20 Centavos. The story that gives the drink its lasting name comes from the highlands surrounding Puno, the Andean city at 12,500 feet on the western shore of Lake Titicaca, where military cavalry captains making their nightly rounds on horseback would stop at local bars and order their pisco-and-vermouth. Bartenders would serve them saying para mi capitán — for my captain — and the name traveled with the drink's reputation back to Lima. The first written documentation of the name Capitán appears in the 1924 registry of Morris Bar in Lima, the same establishment that produced the Pisco Sour. The drink has since been served at a 2:1 pisco-to-vermouth ratio in the style of a Manhattan, with Angostura bitters and a green olive garnish.