Pisco Punch

Fresh pineapple steeped for a day or two in rich sugar syrup, traditionally with gum arabic dissolved in for body. Strain it and you get a syrup with weight that plain juice cannot give you. Use 15 ml of it and drop the simple syrup if you go that route.

Yes. Acholado is blended from several grape varieties and tends to land between the sharp herbal piscos and the perfumed floral ones, which is exactly what you want against pineapple. A single-variety quebranta also works and reads drier. Avoid anything sold simply as brandy.

Pineapple juice has body and a faint sweetness that coats everything, and pisco is unaged so there's no oak tannin to remind you it's a spirit. Sixty milliliters is a serious pour. The lemon keeps it from sliding into fruit-juice territory, but only just.

Mix the pisco, syrup and pineapple hours ahead and refrigerate. Hold the lemon until twenty minutes before serving, because cut citrus goes dull and slightly bitter after about four hours. Serve from a bowl over one large block of ice rather than cubes.

A classic Pisco Punch calls for 60 ml (2 oz) Pisco, 30 ml (1 oz) Pineapple juice, 15 ml (0.5 oz) Fresh lemon juice, 8 ml (0.25 oz) Simple syrup. That single-serve spec scales cleanly — the recipe above converts it to oz and multiplies it for 2–4 drinks.

A standard Pisco Punch is roughly 22% ABV once mixed (before ice melt softens it further). That makes it spirit-forward — closer to a Martini than to a beer, so sip it slowly.

A Pisco Punch is shaken — the rule of thumb is to shake anything with citrus juice. About 13 seconds with plenty of ice chills and dilutes it correctly.