Pisco Sour

Peruvian pisco, lime, egg white, and Angostura bitters — created at Lima's Morris' Bar around 1920, the frothy egg white added by Mario Bruiget in the late 1920s.

The Pisco Sour was created in Lima, Peru around 1920 by Victor Morris, an American bartender from Salt Lake City, Utah, who had moved to Peru and opened Morris' Bar on Calle Boza in the Jiron de la Unión in 1916. Morris combined Peruvian pisco — the grape-based spirit distilled in Peru and Chile whose name likely derives from the Quechua word pisqu (meaning bird) or from the port city of Pisco in the Ica Region — with lime juice and sugar in a sour format that he had learned from the American whiskey sour tradition. The original Morris version did not include egg white; that refinement is credited to Mario Bruiget, a Peruvian bartender who worked at Morris' Bar in the late 1920s and added the frothy egg white topping and the Angostura bitters garnish that define the Peruvian style. Pisco itself is produced from specific grape varieties — in Peru, the eight permitted varieties include Quebranta, Uvina, Mollar, and four aromatic types — and must be distilled to proof without dilution or aging, giving it a clean, intensely grape-forward character. The Pisco Sour is the national cocktail of Peru, recognized by a Peruvian national holiday on the first Saturday of February each year. Chile also claims the drink as a national symbol and produces its own Pisco Sour, though the two countries differ in their definitions of pisco itself — a dispute with deep historical, commercial, and cultural dimensions.