Refreshing Summertime Drinks for Peruvian Independence Day By Guillermo L. Toro-Lira San Francisco has always been a city that perseveres. Burned to the ground three times in six months in 1850, it continued to rise again from its ashes like the mythological phoenix, forever cast in the official seal of the City. Now, after being obliterated 90 years ago by the infamous Prohibition Act of 1919, another phoenix is flying again. This bird is pisco, a grape brandy that was the base of a punch that had its own mythological characteristics in the early 1900s. Pisco Punch is San Francisco’s first known mixed cocktail created in the late 1800s and the older sibling to the popular Pisco Sour. With Peruvian Independence Day on July 28, what better way to celebrate than with a piece of cocktail history linking the ports of San Francisco and Peru?