Getting to know our Pisco Mollar Grape

Name: Mollar.
It is a non-aromatic variety with a bright red copper color. It is generally
produced in small quantities and often found growing in the shade of
Quebranta grape plants.

Origin: The Canary Islands, Spain

Piskos: The origin of a name

On a warm afternoon framed by  a magnificent sunset with a  flushed sky, many years before the arrival of the Spanish, Cacique (Chief) Chuquimanco and his people  admired in what is now the Bay of Paracas, (South Lima 200km.)  the horizon where thousands of birds fluttered seeking shelter. The villagers kept saying "pisscu, pisscu" bird-in Quechua which Word, the Chief and his subjects were inspired to apply to themselves.

There is no reference of grape brandy distillation in America before Pisco, as far back occurs in Peru.

The earliest historical reference to the preparation of grape eau-de-vie dates back to the early 17th Century. Lorenzo Huertas, renown Peruvian historian, says: “We have found what might be the oldest reference to the preparation of (grape) eau-de-vie not only in Peru, but in America: a document from 1713 mentioning the manufacturing of this liquor in Ica.” The document mentioned by Huertas is the will of Pedro Manuel the Greek, resident of Ica, whose last will stated that, among his properties, he had a Creole slave and “thirty burnay jars filled with eau-de-vie, and a barrel filled with eau-de-vie, that contained thirty little pitchers of such liquor, plus a large lidded copper cauldron used to extract eau-de-vie, and two pultayas, one with a spout and the other smaller and in better conditions.” This is the oldest information found in Peru about eau-de-vie.

Getting to know our Pisco The Quebranta Grape

The Quebranta grape variety originates from the PIsco valley along the southern coast of Peru.

Pisco is processed with Quebranta Grapes. This is the variety that comes from the genetic mutation from the black grape brought by the Spanish, which happened due to the plants’ adaptation to the environmental conditions (rocky soil and desert climate in the Pisco Province, and which extends to the valleys in the departments of Lima, Ica, Arequipa, Moquegua and some valleys in Tacna where there are very similar conditions).