Peruvian Pisco Sour with Lime, Egg White Foam and Aromatic Bitters

Add the pisco, fresh lime juice, simple syrup and egg white to a cocktail shaker — but no ice yet.

Ingredients

• Per cocktail:
• 60ml Peruvian pisco (Quebranta or Acholado)
• 25ml fresh lime juice (Peruvian limon if you can find it)
• 20ml simple syrup (1:1 sugar to water)
• 1 fresh egg white (about 20ml)
• Plenty of ice cubes
• Angostura bitters, to finish

Instructions

1. Add the pisco, fresh lime juice, simple syrup and egg white to a cocktail shaker — but no ice yet.
2. Do a 'dry shake' first: seal the shaker and shake hard for 15-20 seconds with no ice. This whips the egg white into the thick, silky foam that crowns a proper pisco sour.
3. Open the shaker, fill it with ice cubes, reseal, and shake again hard for another 15-20 seconds until the outside of the shaker is frosted and the drink is well chilled.
4. Double-strain through a fine mesh strainer into a chilled coupe or small tumbler, holding back the ice so a clean, pale, foamy drink pours into the glass.
5. Let it settle for a few seconds so the foam rises and sets into a smooth white cap on top.
6. Finish by dotting 3 drops of Angostura bitters onto the foam. For the classic flourish, drag a cocktail stick gently through the drops to feather them into a pattern.
7. Serve immediately, while the foam is at its peak — the first sip should be all citrus, froth and aromatic spice before the warmth comes through.
8. Balance is everything: it should be bright and sour first, gently sweet underneath, with the bitters perfuming every sip.
9. The pisco sour is the national cocktail of Peru, and Peruvians celebrate it with its own holiday — Día del Pisco Sour — on the first Saturday of February. Pisco itself, a clear grape brandy, has been distilled in the desert valleys of southern Peru since the 16th century, named for the port town of Pisco from which it was shipped. The sour as we know it was created in 1920s Lima by an American bartender, Victor Vaughen Morris, at his Morris Bar, then perfected by his Peruvian barman Mario Bruiget, who added the egg-white foam and aromatic bitters that define it today. Frothy, citrus-bright and crowned with a feathering of bitters, it is the taste of a Lima evening — and the source of a famously good-natured rivalry with neighbouring Chile over whose pisco came first.