Pisco Punch
Gold Rush in a glass
A legendary Gold Rush–era San Francisco punch: pisco brightened with pineapple and citrus over a float of dry white wine, with clove warmth running underneath. Deceptively light and dangerously moreish.
Ingredients
- 2 oz Pisco
- 1/2 oz Fresh Lemon Juice
- 1/2 oz Simple Syrup
- 3/4 oz Pineapple Juice
- 1 oz Dry White Wine
- 3 pieces Cloves
Method
Gently mash the simple syrup with the cloves in a shaker. Add pisco, lemon juice, and pineapple juice with ice. Shake and double strain into a chilled coupe glass. Float the dry white wine on top and gently stir. Garnish with a pineapple wedge.
Created in 1880s San Francisco at the Bank Exchange (Montgomery and Washington, near present-day Transamerica Pyramid), where Scottish bartender and owner Duncan Nicol created and guarded the secret recipe. Rudyard Kipling immortalized it in From Sea to Sea (1889) as "compounded of the shavings of cherub's wings, the glory of a tropical dawn, the red clouds of sunset and the fragments of lost epics by dead masters." Nicol took the formula to his grave (died 1926). John Lannes, who later owned the Bank Exchange, possessed the recipe and shared it with lawyer A. Crawford Greene in a 1941 letter. William Bronson recovered and published Lannes' version in the California History Society Quarterly (1973). Multiple reconstructed versions exist; no single "original" formula is confirmed. Per Difford's Guide #1557 (Difford's own 2003 modern interpretation).
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