Pisco, Aguardiente & Me

We took a day trip out to a small town in the Elqui Valley called Vicuña. Just outside of town is one of the largest producers of Chilean Pisco (a grape brandy) named Capel. We stayed at an old Pisco estancia in Peru and walked through their old equipment - we thought it would be interesting to see how it all worked. So, we took the tour.

The first part of the tour was in an underground room where they stored many oak barrels of pisco and their original processing equipment. We saw some of the same pieces there that we had seen in Ica (which was kind-of neat). I was surprised to see the process and how close it is to making wine (although they do use different varieties of grapes).

Our guide explained how they squeezed the grapes (almost exclusively Muscat grapes)and saved the juice only (in wine they save the skins - that's where they get the wine taste from - to make pisco, they don't need it.). They test the amount of sugar in the juice and only the juice under a certain level of sweetness is sent on to make pisco (the other is used to make a product called aguardiente - which uses the same process but the extra sugar makes it a lethal alcohol level). Then they boil the juice and syphon off the steam produced.

After the steam is put into a stainless barrel, they add a yeast that is found on the grape skins (or they put it in oak barrels). After a short period of time, the pisco in the large stainless storage tanks are ready for bottling. Some of the pisco they store in the barrel for up to 6 months - then they bottle it.

When they move the now pisco to the bottling phase, they test the alcohol level of their product. All bottled chilean pisco can only have an alchol level of between 30% - 43%, so they pour the bottle full of pisco according to the alcohol level found and then add water to fill the bottle. This seems so strange to me. I mean, you do all the work and then you age it in oak - why would you want to mix that with water? If the issue is alcohol consumption, why not sell smaller bottles? I mean, it has to taste pretty good before you mix it with the water if people are going to drink it, right?

Anyhow, after our tour we visited the tasting room. They had a couple of premade mixed drinks (ie Pisco Sour, Pisco Mango, etc) they sell in grocery stores here and a sample or two of the pure thing. It knocked my socks off! And that was WITH it mixed with the water! I guess I'm just really not all that big on alcohol shots. They had a pretty extensive company store to walk through before you could leave the tasting room (sort of like those rides at Disney World that exit through a store full of the items from the ride you just got off of). We were able to hold-out though, so none of us are toating around a Capel shirt or hat - or multiple bottles of pisco - sometimes its good to have limited space in your luggage.

The walk back to town was hot, but not too far. We spent a few minutes walking around the central square. The park had venders selling their wares on blankets on the ground. We saw a lamp made from a cow skull, plastic light-up fairy wands direct from China, and very large earrings. Again, we were able to abstain from walking away with any of those beauties and we made our way back to the bus station to get a bus back to the beach.