If you’re (still?) reading this and haven’t yet come to appreciate pisco – Peru’s almighty grape distillate – as a worthy sipping spirit, then consider this a nudge to get amongst it. Small-batch pisco is something we’ve always carried in, er, small batches, and we’ve now got a trio of newbies in play from Pisco Huamaní, out of the Ica Valley in southern Peru.
Our mate José Alkon stumbled upon this 125-year-old distillery on a recent trip back home in pursuit of some new pisco for Pepito’s, the rollicking Peruvian tavern he owns and runs in Marrickville. What he’s returned with is a peerless house pisco bottled for the bar – dubbed Rest in Pisco – that’s produced by hand to a generations-old recipe and method using traditional quebranta grapes. You bet it makes a banger of a Pisco Sour, but it’s equally brilliant as a Mule or on its own, too, with a well-chiseled palate of dried apricots, white flowers and green pears.
If you’re looking to level up, there’s a bit more complexity to the Acholado – a blend of quebranta, Italia and torontel grapes – which skews more towards the citrusy side of things, though there are traces of bananas and honey in there, too. And, if you’re in the market for something totally different, the Torontel is the one – made with the explosively aromatic torontel (aka torrontés) variety, and perfumed to the hilt with lemongrass, jasmine, peaches and rose petals. Heady, to say the least...