Pisco Punch

San Francisco's legendary lost cocktail—pisco elevated with pineapple gum syrup and citrus, once called "a whisper of the gods."

Pisco Punch is the only pisco cocktail with a documented American commercial history, created at the Bank Exchange Saloon in San Francisco during the Gold Rush era and made famous enough to attract visitors from around the world. The Bank Exchange, located at the corner of Washington and Montgomery Streets in San Francisco's financial district, was operated by Duncan Nicol from 1876 until Prohibition forced its closure in 1919. Nicol's Pisco Punch was made from pisco (imported from Peru through San Francisco's Pacific trade routes), pineapple gum syrup (a concentrated pineapple-and-gum arabic syrup that served as both sweetener and preservative), lemon juice, and water or soda, served in a small punch glass. The drink attracted an extraordinary reputation: Rudyard Kipling visited San Francisco in 1889 and wrote in his travel letters that he had encountered a drink whose name was pisco punch and whose quality he described in extravagant terms, though the precise wording varies across different historical reproductions of his account. The recipe was Nicol's proprietary secret and was not preserved in writing when Prohibition closed the establishment in 1919, making it one of the few pre-Prohibition cocktail recipes genuinely lost rather than simply forgotten. Modern reconstructions by cocktail historians including David Wondrich and others have approximated the formula through historical research.