Imbibe! by David Wondrich Page B

. . . Though, as Harold Ross of the New Yorker later recalled, “All San Francisco bars used to serve them, and one or two served nothing else,” it was universally acknowledged that the one true and authentic recipe—complete with secret ingredient—was in the sole possession of a closemouthed old Scot by the name of Duncan Nicol, proprietor of the historic Bank Exchange saloon; he died in 1926, his secret seemingly intact. Five or six years later, the historian Herbert Asbury scoured the town “industriously, even desperately” for a bottle of pisco, the clear South American brandy upon which the drink was based; he found none. Nor did the situation improve much after Repeal: there was a short-lived attempt to sell a bottled Pisco Punch, and San Francisco maintained a “House of Pisco” for a while in the mid-1940s, but by 1950 both Punch and pisco had effectively vanished from the American pharmacopoeia. While I cannot in good conscience call this a tragedy, it is certainly a shame. For the seventy-odd years leading up to Prohibition, San Francisco had witnessed the finest flowering of the American sporting life—that created by the “gentleman of elegant leisure,” as one early San Franciscan defined his occupation, and the soiled doves with which he associated—and Pisco Punch was its Oil of Anointment. That life is beyond recovery, but thankfully the Punch is not. Although a few recipes were published in the 1900s and 1910s, this one, from Nicol’s bar manager, has the greatest claim to authenticity.
    1. Take a fresh pineapple. Cut it in squares about ½ by 1½ inches. Put these squares of fresh pineapple in a bowl of gum syrup to soak overnight. That serves the double purpose of flavoring the gum syrup with the pineapple and soaking the pineapple, both of which are used afterwards in the Pisco Punch.
    2. In the morning mix in a big bowl the following:
     
    ½ PINT (8 OZ) OF THE GUM SYRUP, PINEAPPLE FLAVORED AS ABOVE
     
1 PINT (16 OZ) DISTILLED WATER
     
¾ PINT (10 OZ [SIC] ) LEMON JUICE
     
1 BOTTLE (24 OZ) PERUVIAN PISCO BRANDY
     
     
    Serve very cold but be careful not to keep the ice in too long because of dilution. Use 3 or 4 oz punch glasses. Put one of these above squares of pineapple in each glass. Lemon juice or gum syrup may be added to taste.
    SOURCE: WILLIAM BRONSON, “SECRETS OF PISCO PUNCH REVEALED,” CALIFORNIA HISTORICAL QUARTERLY , 1973
    NOTES ON INGREDIENTS: If possible the pisco should be of the varietal known as Italia (Barsol and Don Cesar are two particularly good brands). One of the early recipes claims that lime juice can also be used. It can. It has been suggested to me that Nicol’s secret ingredient was cocaine, at least until it was outlawed. I don’t recommend it.
     
    NOTES ON EXECUTION: Nicol had his own procedure for preparing this, which included compounding part of it in secrecy in the basement every morning. Pauline Jacobson, a color writer for the San Francisco Bulletin who did a piece about the Bank Exchange in 1912, watched Nicol assemble the drink and recorded one of the regulars’ commentary on the process:
     
    “See . . . he is squeezing a f-r-e-s-h lemon. In the bar uptown they have the lemon juice already prepared, which leaves a bitter taste after drinking. And Duncan n-e-v-e-r uses any of them effervescent waters. . . . He always uses distilled water.”
     
    This, combined with Jacobson’s description of Nicol, “intent upon his work, with hands trembling with the years, yet measuring with the nicety of an apothecary,” prompts me to suggest the following procedure:
    First, prepare the pineapple syrup, as above. Mix this with the pisco, with three parts pisco to one part syrup and bottle it (this will keep in the refrigerator for at least a couple of weeks, and longer if you strain out the sediment that it will throw off ). To assemble the drink, combine in a cocktail shaker 2 ounces of the pisco-syrup mix, ¾ ounce distilled water (or bottled