Peru Libre

The Peruvian answer to the Cuba Libre, combining smooth pisco with cola and fresh lime for an easy, refreshing highball.

The Peru Libre is South America's pisco equivalent of the Cuba Libre, applying the straightforward highball formula of spirit, cola, and lime to Peru's national spirit rather than Cuba's rum. The Cuba Libre itself is documented from around 1900 in Havana, where American soldiers and Cuban independence fighters celebrating the end of Spanish colonial rule mixed Coca-Cola — a recently introduced American product — with Cuban rum and lime, with the toast ¡Por Cuba libre! giving the drink its name. The formula spread globally and remains one of the most-ordered cocktails in the world. Peruvian drinking culture found its own version by substituting pisco for rum, a substitution that changes the drink significantly: where rum's molasses-derived sweetness and tropical roundness blend smoothly with cola's caramel and vanilla notes, pisco's grape-distilled freshness, light floral character, and clean finish create a different relationship with the cola's sweetness. Pisco has been distilled in Peru's coastal and Inca valleys since the 16th century, when Spanish colonists planted Vitis vinifera grape varieties in the region of present-day Lima and Ica. The Peruvian denomination of origin for pisco requires it to be distilled from specific grape varieties, unaged, and brought to bottling proof without dilution. Piscola — the similar combination popular in Chile — uses Chilean pisco, which is distilled under somewhat different regulations. The Peru Libre represents the casual, everyday face of Peruvian pisco culture.