Happy Labor Day!

Observed on the first Monday in September, Labor Day pays tribute to the contributions and achievements of American workers. It was created by the labor movement in the late 19th century and became a federal holiday in 1894. Labor Day also symbolizes the end of summer for many Americans, and is celebrated with parties, parades and athletic events.

Cocktails are a part of most events right?  So as it were, we thought it befitting to find a cocktail to celebrate Labor day and the end of Summer by going back in time to see what a blue collar American would drink in pre-prohibition 1894!  Our choice…Pisco Punch, our adaptation of this recipe makes it current and relevant anytime!

W & W Pisco Punch

In a cocktail shaker, combine: 2 ounces pisco, 1 ounce distilled water , 2/3 ounce W&W Pineapple Gomme, 3/4 ounce lemon juice.

Shake well, strain into a thin punch glass and garnish with syrup-soaked pineapple chunk., (You can freeze these, if you want ’em to keep.)

Interested in more of the Pisco Punch story?  Read on:

The Wondrich Take:

If there was one drink that pulled ’em in far and wide from all over America, it was the world-renowned Pisco Punch, as served at the Bank Exchange, the legendary bar (everybody, just everybody, drank there) that long flourished on the spot where the Transamerica pyramid now stands. Pisco, an odd kind of clear South American brandy, had come to town with the Chileans and Peruvians, who’d heard about the gold and thought they’d take a poke. Sometime between 1853, when the joint opened, and the late 1870s, when owner John Torrence sold it to a close-mouthed Scottish immigrant by the name of Duncan Nicol (or Nichol, or Nichols), somebody mixed some pisco with a few simple ingredients in careful proportion, and alchemy occurred. (It might’ve been Torrence; the bar was also known as “Pisco John’s”.)

The result? A drink that one initiate compared to “the scimitar of Haroun whose edge was so fine that after a slash a man walked on unaware that his head had been severed from his body until his knees gave way and he fell dead to the ground.” (We can, alas, attest to the truth of that statement; but who needs a body, anyway?) The recipe was a tightly guarded secret, the drink itself anything but. Every greenhorn, every tourist, had to stop at the Bank Exchange and receive communion. Things went on like that until Prohibition, when Nicol had to close up shop. He died before Repeal, and did his best to take the recipe with him. As far as the general drinking public knew, it was lost forever. Yet Nicol’s bar manager, one John Lannes, eventually spilled the beans. The California Historical Society published the formula in 1973, and may the Gods of Drink grant them eternal freedom from hangovers for it. We present it verbatim, repetitious diction and all.

“The Wondrich Take” by David Wondrich with Esquire Magazine