Cocktail & Other Recipes By Spirit Other Cocktails

Strawberry Pisco Sour

two Strawberry Pisco Sour cocktails with thick, foamy heads

Liquor.com / Tim Nusog

The traditional Pisco Sour features pisco—a grape-distilled spirit made in Peru and Chile—fresh citrus, sugar and egg white. Its earthy, sweet and tart flavor profile and rich texture make it a favorite choice among drinkers, but as witnessed with all classic cocktails, enterprising barkeeps are never satisfied with the status quo.

Bartender Naren Young, best known for his work at Dante in New York, created this fruit-forward take on the original. The Strawberry Pisco Sour covers all the key elements you expect (pisco, lime, sweetener and egg white), but it enjoys a couple liberties from the original recipe. To start, it skips the shaker in favor of a blender. And, rather than muddling strawberries—a fine option, to be sure—Young takes the extra step of making a homemade strawberry-rose syrup to sweeten the drink.

The syrup is composed of fresh strawberries, rose syrup and sugar, and it’s cooked in a similar fashion to other infused simple syrups. It takes a little extra effort to produce the syrup, but with a batch on hand, you can make Strawberry Pisco Sours or other cocktails at your leisure.

Young’s recipe serves six, so call some friends before you start the blender. The end result is a gorgeous, brightly colored drink that’s loaded with fresh fruit flavor, so you’ll have no trouble finding volunteers to sample the goods.

Ingredients

  • 10 ounces pisco

  • 6 ounces lime juice, freshly squeezed

  • 6 ounces strawberry-rose syrup*

  • 1 egg white

Steps

Serves 6.

  1. Add pisco, lime juice and the strawberry-rose syrup into a blender with two scoops of ice.

  2. Blend for 20 seconds.

  3. Add egg white and blend again for five to 10 seconds.

  4. Strain through a coarse strainer into glasses.

*Strawberry-rose syrup: In a saucepan over low heat, dissolve 1 cup white sugar in 1 cup water. Add 1 cup of strawberries, finely chopped, and 1/4 ounce rose water. Bring to a low boil, then allow to cool and strain into a glass jar. The syrup will keep, tightly covered and refrigerated, for up to one month.