Culturebox: Pisco

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drink Pisco Don't hate it because it's fashionable. By Troy Patterson Posted Monday, Aug. 8, 2011, at 6:51 AM ET Pisco, a clear grape brandy from the stills of South America, is the fastest-growing liquor in the booze biz, and I'll bet you a round of dry Capitans that cocktail historians will record this as the season of its breakthrough among norteamericanos. Going into the summer drinking term, it demonstrated considerable momentum, with the Peruvian Association of Exporters boasting that in the first four months of 2011, U.S. sales increased by 210 percent year on year, to about $750,000. Granted, there are individual persons who spent a comparable amount of money on bottle-service Grey Goose over the same span of time, but listen to the culture--the dispatches filed from Seattle and West Hollywood and Queens--and look at the aggressiveness of these pisco salesmen. This could be the most determined marketing assault on America's liquor cabinets since the period, just after World War II, when Smirnoff hitched its wagon to the Moscow Mule. The pisco people believe that a rising viscous tide will lift all ships. In the foreword to Gregory Dicum's Pisco Book--a savvy promotional item half-disguised as a handsome user's manual--the importer of Oro calls on brands to join together to "develop the pisco category as whole." In that spirit, Peru's de facto pisco ambassador to the United States is one Johnny Schuler, who is hustling Pisco Porton as an "ultra-premium" brand and product-placing bottles adjacent to Shakira's authoritative writhing in music videos. This is not to slight the efforts of Peru's actual ambassador to the United States, whose office is helping to promote Macchu Pisco and who, just the other night, plied the noted trendsetter Antonin Scalia with pisco sours. Can it be long before Clarence Thomas is faddishly queuing up behind Georgetown sorority girls for a cloying pink piscopolitan? To continue reading, click here. Troy Patterson is Slate's television critic. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Dow Plunges in Aftermath of S&P Credit Downgrade The Serious Economic Blunders European Banks and American Politicians Keep Making The Guy Who's Single-Handedly Making Kids Better at Math and Science	Advertisement
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