Episode 38: Pisco Punch

  • 2 ounces pisco

  • 3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice

  • 3/4 ounce pineapple gomme syrup

  • Optional garnish: a pineapple wedge, pineapple leaves, or a lemon twist

Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker and fill with ice. Shake until well chilled, about 15 seconds, and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish as desired.

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In the late 19th century, one cocktail was basically synonymous with San Francisco.

The Pisco Punch.

Pisco, a Peruvian clear grape brandy similar to grappa, was flooding San Francisco’s ports, so it was cheaper and easier to get in than Whiskey. Bars across the city started serving pisco, including 19th century San Francisco’s most famous bar, the Bank Exchange. In the 1870s A Scottish bartender named Duncan Nichols bought the Bank Exchange and he got so famous for serving up Pisco Punch that people started calling him “Pisco John” and even started calling the Bank Exchange “Pisco John’s”. 

According to legend, a dying stranger “imparted to him the secret formula of a rare punch that went down as lightly as lemonade and came back with the kick of a roped steer.” The reality is that Nichols probably inherited the recipe from the bar’s previous owners. The legend persisted though, because he was the only person in the bar who knew the recipe and wouldn’t let anyone watch as he made batches in secret in the cellar.

When the bar was closed by Prohibition in 1920, people begged Nichols for the recipe, but he wouldn’t budge. Unfortunately, he passed away in 1926 at the age of 72, and took the recipe with him to the grave, and people thought the Pisco Punch was gone forever.

Fortunately, in 1964 a historian was researching a book when he accidentally discovered a letter written by the manager of the Bank Exchange just before Prohibition. It seems that the manager had been carefully watching which ingredients were coming into the bar, and secretly spying on Nichols as he made the punch.

Along with Pisco, sugar, lemon, & pineapple, the recipe’s key ingredient is gum arabic, an emulsifier that prevents sugar syrups from crystallizing. In this cocktail it adds a silky smooth texture that elevates it from a boozy lemonade to the stuff of legend.

Episode 21: Mai Tais Two Ways

The Original 1944 Mai Tai

  • 1 1/2 oz White rum

  • 3/4 oz Orange curaçao

  • 3/4 oz Fresh lime juice

  • 1/4 - 1/2 oz Orgeat Syrup

  • 1/2 oz Dark rum

  • Garnish: Lime wheel, Mint sprig

Add the white rum, curaçao, lime juice and orgeat syrup into a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice and shake to combine.
Strain into a double Old Fashioned glass filled with finely crushed ice (if available). Gently pour the dark rum over the top trying to float it on top.
Garnish with a lime wheel and mint sprig.

1953 Royal Hawaiian Mai Tai:

  • ½ oz Curaçao Liqueur (Triple Sec)

  • 1½ oz Gold/ Amber Rum

  • 1 oz Dark Rum

  • ¼ oz Lime juice

  • 1½ oz Pineapple juice

  • 1½ oz Orange juice

  • ¼ oz Orgeat syrup

  • 1 teaspoon maraschino cherry juice (red) or grenadine for color

  • Garnish: Orange slice, pineapple, red maraschino cherry

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice and shake to combine.
Strain into a large whiskey glass filled with finely crushed ice (if available).
Garnish with a wedge of pineapple, an orange wheel, and a maraschino cherry. 

mai tais two ways beyond reproach

Tiki culture and it’s quintessential cocktails all started in 1933 when Ernest Beaumont-Gantt opened a Polynesian-themed bar and restaurant in Hollywood called Don the Beachcomber. The restaurant featured Cantonese food with a decor of flaming torches, rattan furniture, floral leis, and carved tiki masks and wooden sculptures of Polynesian gods.

This was also the first restaurant to ever focus an entire drink menu on mixing rum with flavored syrups and fresh fruit juices, which they originally called "Rhum Rhapsodies", but were later called Tiki cocktails. These drinks were usually served in fancy glasses, hollowed out pineapples, or drilled coconuts, and sometimes even giant fish bowl sized communal glasses with long straws for sharing.

Perhaps the best known and most popular Tiki cocktail ever is the Mai Tai.

It was originally invented by another restauranteur namedTrader Vic in Oakland California in 1944. Don Beach later accused Trader Vic of stealing the recipe from him, saying that his punch, the Q.B. Cooler, which he invented in 1933, was suspiciously similar. But even if it was inspired by the Q.B. Cooler, they’re very different drinks and the Cooler has almost twice as many ingredients. Vic Bergeron later wrote in his book, "anyone who says I didn’t create this drink is a dirty stinker."

The Mai Tai became so popular that within a few years of its invention, the world ran out of the aged rum called for in the original recipe, so most recipes today call for a mix of light and dark rum.

In the beginning, the Mai Tai was a simple and rum forward drink, but In 1953, a cruise company hired Vic Bergeron to oversee their cocktail menus at their hotels in Hawaii. He reworked the drink adding orange juice and pineapple juice to make it feel more Hawaiian and to sweeten the recipe, so it’d be more tourist friendly.

The Hawaiian version became even more popular than the original and now most people think that’s what a Mai Tai is supposed to taste like. Both versions are absolutely delicious, although they’re so different that they probably shouldn’t both have the same name.

Episode 16: The Piña Colada

  • 2 ½ oz white rum

  • 1 ½ oz pineapple juice

  • 1 ½ oz sweetened coconut cream (We used Coco Lopez)

  • ½ oz lime juice

  • 2 cups ice

  • ½ oz dark rum (optional)

  • Pineapple wedge & cocktail parasol (optional)

Combine white rum, pineapple juice, coconut cream, lime juice, and ice in a high powered blender. Pulse to break up ice and then blend until smooth, creamy, and free of ice chunks.
Pour into a hurricane glass and top with remaining dark rum if desired. Garnish with a wedge of pineapple and a cocktail parasol for the full gaudy 70s effect.

Makes 1 cocktail

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Note: Like a lot of cocktails, it’s hard to nail down the exact origin story.

One story claims that a 19th century Puerto Rican pirate gave his crew a mixed drink with coconut, pineapple and white rum to boost morale on the ship, but historians say this is dubious.

The New York Times noted a similar drink in an article about Cuba in the 1950s.

The most accepted story is that a bartender at the Caribe Hilton Hotel in San Juan created the drink in 1954. He said the Piña Colada, “captured the true nature and essence of Puerto Rico”.

Another story places the origins at a restaurant in Puerto Rico in 1963.

Either way, by the 70s, Piña Coladas were blowing up, and In 1978 Puerto Rico proclaimed the cocktail its official drink.