About the Pisco Punch cocktail
The Pisco Punch is a historic San Francisco cocktail made with pisco, citrus, sugar, and pineapple. It is famously refreshing and deceptively strong, often described as drinking like a bright tropical lemonade with a much more powerful kick underneath.
The drink was created in the 1850s at the Bank Exchange inside San Francisco’s Montgomery Block, a legendary gathering place for writers, artists, and actors. Figures like Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling helped spread its reputation, but the bar closed with the arrival of Prohibition and the exact original recipe was reportedly lost with its owner. Even with that mystery, the Pisco Punch remains one of the great pre-Prohibition cocktails and an important piece of San Francisco cocktail history.
