What is "pisco sour"

n. a Peruvian cocktail containing pisco, lemon or lime juice, egg whites, simple syrup, and bitters

A pisco sour is a cocktail typical of the cuisines from Peru and Chile, considered also a South American classic. The drink's name comes from pisco, which is its base liquor, and the cocktail term sour, in reference to sour citrus juice and sweetener components. The Peruvian pisco sour uses Peruvian pisco as the base liquor and adds Key lime (or lemon) juice, syrup, ice, egg white, and Angostura bitters. The Chilean version is similar, but uses Chilean pisco and pica lime, and excludes the bitters and egg white. Other variants of the cocktail include those created with fruits like pineapple or plants such as coca leaves.

The cocktail originated in Lima, Peru, and was invented by Victor Vaughen Morris, an American bartender, in the early 1920s. Morris left the United States in 1903 to work in Cerro de Pasco, a city in central Peru. In 1916, he opened Morris' Bar in Lima, and his saloon quickly became a popular spot for the Peruvian upper class and English-speaking foreigners. The pisco sour underwent several changes until Mario Bruiget, a Peruvian bartender working at Morris' Bar, created the modern Peruvian recipe of the cocktail in the latter part of the 1920s by adding Angostura bitters and egg whites to the mix.

In Chile, folklorist Oreste Plath attributed the invention of the drink to Elliot Stubb, an English steward of a ship named Sunshine, who allegedly mixed Key lime juice, syrup, and ice cubes to create the cocktail in a bar, in 1872, in the port city of Iquique, which at that time was part of Peru. Regardless, the original source cited by Plath attributed to Stubb the invention of the whiskey sour—not the pisco sour. The oldest known mentions of the pisco sour are from a 1921 magazine attributing Morris as the inventor and a 1924 advertisement for Morris' Bar published in a newspaper from the port of Valparaíso, Chile.

Chile and Peru both claim the pisco sour as their national drink, and each asserts ownership of the cocktail's base liquor—pisco; consequently, the pisco sour has become a significant and oft-debated topic of Latin American popular culture. The two kinds of pisco and the two variations in the style of preparing the pisco sour are distinct in both production and taste. Peru celebrates a yearly public holiday in honor of the cocktail during the first Saturday of February.