A silky, frothy sour in which fragrant grape brandy meets the bright snap of fresh lime, with just enough sugar to round off the edges. A pale cap of egg-white foam softens every sip, and a few aromatic drops of bitters scattered across it perfume the nose before the first taste.
Garnish: Angostura Bitters
Shaken · Goblet · Up
add
Combine the pisco, lime juice, simple syrup, and egg white in a shaker.
shake
Dry-shake without ice for about 10 seconds to whip the egg white into a foam.
shake
Add ice and shake again until well chilled.
strain
Fine-strain into a chilled goblet.
garnish
Dash a few drops of aromatic (Amargo/Angostura) bitters over the foam.
The American bartender Victor Vaughen Morris is credited with devising it at Morris' Bar, the Lima saloon he had opened in 1916, shaping it as a take on the whiskey sour; it was already being served there before 1922. Later in the 1920s Mario Bruiget, a Peruvian bartender at the same bar, added egg white and Angostura, giving the drink the form it keeps today. Peru holds it up as its national cocktail, though Chile contests the claim, and a recipe printed in the 1903 Nuevo Manual de Cocina points to an earlier ancestor.