Pisco Punch

60 ml (2 oz) pisco (quebranta)
20 ml (~0.75 oz) fresh pineapple juice
15 ml (0.5 oz) fresh lime juice
10 ml (~0.25 oz) sugar syrup
2–3 drops aromatic bitters

🧃🧃

Notes

The legendary house drink of the Bank Exchange saloon in San Francisco, served from the 1850s through Prohibition by Scottish immigrant Duncan Nicol, who guarded the recipe obsessively — it was believed lost when he died in 1926. Rudyard Kipling reportedly called it "compounded of the shavings of cherub's wings, the glory of a tropical dawn, the red clouds of sunset, and fragments of lost epics by dead masters." The original likely used pineapple gum syrup (gomme) rather than plain sugar, giving it a silkier texture. Modern reconstructions vary, but the drink's addition to the IBA New Era Drinks list has helped standardize a working spec.