Posted on Thu, Aug. 25, 2005  Miami Herald.

Peru in a glass: A pisco primer
By JACOB GOLDSTEIN
jgoldstein@herald.com


It may be possible to understand pisco without considering the Spanish conquest of South America, the Chilean invasion of Peru and the first Peruvian driver to finish the Paris-Dakar road rally.

But if you ask Ari Loebl about the potent brandy known chiefly for its role in the pisco sour, that is more or less the route his answer will take. The route will be long, and it will be framed by a grand yet simple rhetorical flourish.

''Why do we claim that pisco is Peruvian?'' he will ask. ``It is history.''

That question (and its answer) go to the heart of a Peruvian complaint against Chile, which manufactures and exports more pisco than Peru -- a fact that has inspired not only much gnashing of teeth among the Peruvian cognoscenti but a case before the United Nations-sponsored World International Trade Organization.

The WIPO ruled on July 14 that brandy can be called pisco only if it comes from Peru. Two weeks later, on Peru's independence day, pisco spewed from the fountain at the center of Lima's main square.

TRADING PLACES

Ari Loebl is in the pisco business. Although he and his wife, Elena, relocated to South Florida in 1986 with their son, Herbie, they still do business in their native Lima. The family distributes American and European food products in Peru (''Hershey, Wrigleys . . . big names,'' Elena says) and Peruvian foods in the United States and Europe.

In the early 1970s, Loebl, a fan of car racing, met Coco Corbetto, the first Peruvian ever to finish the Paris-Dakar rally. Corbetto ran his family's business, Pisco Montesierpe.

''His pisco was very good, but he didn't know how to sell it,'' Elena says.

The Loebls began selling Montesierpe in Peru in 1999. Last year, they began importing it to the U.S.

Since then, Herbie has spent countless hours schmoozing liquor store owners and bartenders -- buying drinks, asking what they know about pisco, leaving them free bottles. He says he now sells to about 250 South Florida customers.

Herbie, who is 25 and could be cast in a movie as an earnest young man on the make, is particularly pleased with the work of Leonardo Lopez, an Argentine bartender at Sushi Samba Dromo on Lincoln Road. Lopez might mix a pisco lychee-tini or a pisco with watermelon and mint.

He also makes a fine pisco sour, shaken rather than the traditional frappe. The drink is three parts pisco, two parts citrus (lemon, lime or sour mix), one part sugar, a dash of bitters and a raw egg white (or pasteurized, powdered egg white, depending on the bartender).

There is something to be said for watching a bartender crack an egg and separate the white into the pint glass in which he's mixing your drink. In a small way it conveys the sense of living on the edge, of literally drinking in what the world has to offer, that is part of the pleasure of getting drunk in a bar.

Though pisco is made only of grapes, its smell and taste are reminiscent of a very mellow tequila, and the pisco sour could be a cousin of the margarita, with a little meringue on top courtesy of the agitated egg white.

''What gets you is the foam,'' says Herbie. ``You never had a drink with foam on it.''

SPANISH CONQUEST

Ari Loebl's story of the meaning of pisco begins in the 1530s, with the Spanish conquest of the Incas.

''When they came to Peru they found there were no grapes,'' he says. ``There was no wine. There's no Spaniard who will have lunch without wine.''

The conquerors discovered their Old World grapes grew well in a valley south of present-day Lima. The valley was full of birds, and came to be called Pisco, from pisscu, the native word for ''little bird.'' (This according to a Peruvian tourism brochure titled ''Pisco Belongs to Peru.'' The obvious subtitle -- ''and not to Chile'' -- is left unstated.)

In time the name of the valley was also applied to the brandy distilled from the local wine.

According to Loebl, pisco made its way to Chile during the War of the Pacific in 1879. ''The Chileans, when they invaded Peru, they liked the pisco and they took it to Chile,'' he says. (For their part, the Chileans claim they began making brandy in the 17th century and selling it as pisco in 1871, eight years before the war.)

Chilean pisco is aged in wood barrels, which give it a brownish tint, and mixed with water to lower the alcohol content. Peruvian pisco is kept in glass or steel containers (''It has to be completely transparent,'' Loebl says) and sold undiluted. Peruvian pisco is 76 to 96 proof; most Chilean piscos are 60 to 90 proof.

The recent WIPO ruling is unlikely to affect pisco sales in the U.S., which is not a signatory to the treaty governing country-of-origin labeling for spirits. The battle between the two countries seems likely to slog on.

Like the French, who insist that champagne can only be made in Champagne, the Peruvians say pisco must come from Pisco (or thereabouts).

The website of the Peruvian embassy in London offers a 14-page 'defense of the Peruvian denomination of origin `pisco' '' that includes a detailed history of grape cultivation in Peru as well as a list of 17 pisco-related laws, resolutions and decrees.

The Chileans seem to favor a live-and-let-live approach.

''Shared with our Peruvian neighbours,'' says the website of Chile's U.S. embassy, ``pisco is a grape brandy of high alcoholic grade.''

''Each one has its clientele,'' says Marcel Encina, owner of Sabores Chilenos on Flagler Street. ``The Chileans like the Chilean. The Peruvians like the Peruvian.''

If nothing else, the fight has raised pisco's profile back home.

Drinking it ''just recently has become an issue of patriotism,'' Herbie says.

''Five years ago, of every 10 cocktails that were sold in Peru, nine were whiskey and one was pisco,'' says Ari. ``Today it's exactly the opposite.''