It's not aged, but is let to rest for around eight months to a year before bottling, and it's distilled to proof - 86 proof - meaning no water is added in the process to dilute the alcohol.Įach year, one batch of Portón is made the old way, with the grapes pressed by feet. The liquid is clear, distilled in copper in small batches. "To make great pisco, you first make great wine," Schuler says as he pours me a taste.
Traditionally enjoyed en masse in Chile mixed with Coke at a lower proof, or drunk cheaply as pisco sours in Lima, Schuler said it had taken him 40 years to realize that pisco was just like cognac - like wine. "What is this?" he recalls, "Fruits, flowers - I was in heaven.
SHAKIRA MUSIC VIDEO PISCO PORTON PROFESSIONAL
But, being a professional taster, he knew to spit between samples, and by his fourth or fifth taste, he was in love. Schuler, a great connoisseur of wines (he has more than 2,000 bottles at home) wasn't excited by the offer. He was running a pisco competition, and the judges were getting too drunk to be useful. Twenty seven years ago Schuler was awakened in the night by a phone call from a dear friend with a dire emergency. He was not always even a fan of the drink. This "big, beautiful business opportunity," as Schuler calls it, was the culmination of several years spent as the "self-appointed and then semi-officially appointed" ambassador of Peruvian pisco - financing tasting competitions, giving interviews, and even eliminating all other after-dinner drinks at his own Lima restaurants, Key Club and La Granja Azul.īut Schuler was not always a pisco authority. The trio bought the oldest distillery in South America - Hacienda la Caravedo, established in 1684 - and got to work. "They told me, 'We want to go into business, but only with you.'" The Kallops invited Schuler into the pisco-making business two years ago, and Schuler says there was a handshake deal right off the bat.
However passing the pisco cameo, it's exciting for those of us who are familiar with the first-ever brand of premium pisco - Pisco Portón.ĭistilled in Peru under the eye of restaurateur and world-renowned pisco authority Johnny Schuler, the Pisco Portón brand was founded by Houston couple Cristina and William Kallop, who split their time between the Bayou City and Lima, Peru (among other travels). It's not a Houston athlete or one of our famous music producers - it's a bottle of pisco, glimpsed just barely as Shaki writhes in a tub of those balls that used to populate McDonald's playgrounds (and sanitation exposés on the local news). The new Shakira video for her latest single, "Rabiosa," has a Houston connection.
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