Peru

Peru's national cocktail: a cloud of citrus foam over grape brandy, crowned with three drops of bitters — tart, silky and gloriously proud. Ingredients: Peruvian pisco, fresh lime juice (the small, fierce Peruvian limón), sugar syrup, egg white, ice, and Angostura bitters for the crown. Method: 1) Shake pisco, lime, syrup and egg white first without ice to build the foam, then with ice to chill. 2) Strain into a chilled glass. 3) Finish with drops of bitters on the foam — the signature flourish. The experience: a perfect sour — bright lime, grape-bright pisco, and a meringue-soft top. History: the pisco sour is commonly credited to American bartender Victor Vaughen Morris, who mixed it at his Lima bar in the 1920s; Peru loves it so officially that the first Saturday of every February is Día del Pisco Sour, a national holiday for a cocktail.

The soul inside the sour: pisco is Peru's grape brandy, distilled to proof in the desert valleys of Ica and never touched by wood. Ingredients: wine grapes — aromatic Italia and Torontel, or the sturdy, earthy Quebranta — fermented into wine in Peru's coastal valleys. Method: 1) Distill the fresh wine once, in copper stills, and — uniquely — bottle it at the strength it leaves the still, with no water added. 2) Rest it at least three months in neutral vessels (never oak, by Peruvian law) so the grape speaks pure. 3) Serve neat in small glasses, or build a sour or chilcano. The experience: intensely grapey and floral, dry and clean — wine's vineyard soul, concentrated. History: Spanish colonists were distilling grape brandy around the port of Pisco by the late 1500s; the spirit took the port's name and sailed the Pacific from there.

Lima's tall, sparkling refresher: pisco and ginger ale over ice — older in bar lore than the sour, and the drink Peruvians actually order all summer. Ingredients: Peruvian pisco, ginger ale, fresh lime juice, Angostura bitters, plenty of ice, a lime wheel. Method: 1) Fill a highball glass with ice. 2) Add pisco, lime and a dash of bitters. 3) Top with ginger ale, stir once, and garnish with lime. The experience: crisp, gingery and dangerously refreshing — pisco's grape brightness stretched long and cold. History: the chilcano shares its name with a beloved Peruvian fish-head soup said to cure hangovers — the cocktail borrows the name and the restorative reputation. Every January, Lima celebrates the Semana del Chilcano, a whole week in its honor.