Machu Picchu

A dazzling layered pisco cocktail from Cusco whose three vivid tiers of red, orange, and green honor the colors of the ancient Inca flag.

The Machu Picchu cocktail is a layered pisco drink whose visual design references the Inca Empire's symbolic colors. The drink was created in 1984 by Bernardo Solis Loaiza, a Cusco-based bartender working at the Hotel Libertador in Cusco, Peru, conceived as a tribute to the ancient Inca citadel whose dramatic mountain setting above the Urubamba River valley in the Cusco region had been brought to international attention by Hiram Bingham III's 1911 Yale expedition and subsequent National Geographic coverage. The cocktail's three-layer construction — typically grenadine's red at the bottom, fresh orange juice in the middle, and green crème de menthe at the top — references colors associated with the Tawantinsuyu (the Quechua name for the Inca Empire, meaning Land of the Four Quarters), whose symbolic palette included red, orange, yellow, and green. Machu Picchu itself is one of the world's most recognized archaeological sites, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983 and named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in a 2007 global poll. The Hotel Libertador Palacio del Inka, where the cocktail was created, is one of the oldest and most prestigious luxury hotels in Cusco, operated in a colonial building near the Plaza de Armas.