Nick Gillett: A South American star – why we shouldn't sleep on pisco

Published: 06 July, 2026

I’m being asked about pisco a lot at the moment, and the question is almost always some version of: “what’s going on?” Demand is up, producers from Peru and Chile are putting real money behind UK pushes, and suddenly a spirit that’s quietly sat on cocktail menus for decades is being talked about like the latest hot, new tipple.

What’s actually happening isn’t new. Like it or not, many of the drinks trends we come to love are intrinsically linked with cuisine. And – for the foodies amongst us – it will be no surprise when I say South American food and culture have enjoyed a proper moment here over the last few years. As menus change and bartenders come back to old serves (or find them for the first time) categories like pisco get rediscovered rather than reinvented. The pisco sour is a genuinely brilliant drink, and it marries beautifully with food – a core part of why it’s been on cocktail menus for at least 150 years.

Where it gets really interesting is on the production side. Pisco has historically been a category of small, often family-run producers, the kind who – when they were founded – had to shoot for the stars to build a successful export business from scratch. The kind of business that succeeded due to the sheer craft and quality of its produce.

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With this added spotlight on the category, we’re now seeing international investment land in some of these distilleries, and with those added funds, producers have the resources to compete for global attention, bringing more stellar liquids to our lips. More capital means more noise, more listings, more reason for bars here to take it seriously. I won’t pretend to know the fine print of every export tariff or local tax regime across South America, but anyone who’s tried to get a small producer’s spirit out of the region and into a UK warehouse will tell you the logistics and bureaucracy are real friction points. It’s not stopping the growth – but it’s certainly not making it easier for producers.

It’s not just pisco

I’m going to widen the lens here, because pisco isn’t travelling alone. South America as a destination has truly opened up for British travellers; backpackers are heading to Colombia and Peru in the kind of numbers that used to go to Southeast Asia, and that brings a real appreciation for the culture, the food and, inevitably, the drinks. Cachaça is another obvious beneficiary. I’ve worked in that category, and the caipirinha has historically been held back by nothing more than people being unsure how to say it. Argentina’s staple, Fernet and Coke, deserves a mention too: a brilliant, unfussy serve, and a category we’ll be putting real energy behind through Fernet-Branca.

And perhaps even more surprisingly is none of this is being driven by a particular age group. The data on who’s drinking pisco is skewed by where it’s served, cutting-edge restaurants and better cocktail bars, rather than by any conscious targeting of younger or older drinkers. In my opinion, it’s a venue story more than a generational one.

Here’s my actual concern for the category, and it’s not a glamorous one: pisco’s popularity is too intrinsically tied to one single drink. The pisco sour is fantastic, but you can’t build a global phenomenon on one serve, and punches haven’t proven popular enough to take the strain off. Spend a whole evening on pisco sours and you’ll understand the problem soon enough.

When it comes to pisco, provenance and terroir matter enormously to the quality of liquid and to a brand’s identity. I’ll happily leave the Peru-versus-Chile debate to people who enjoy a good argument over a glass, but I’d argue that’s not the battle pisco needs to be fighting right now. We need more appreciation and more understanding of pisco as a liquid, first. The job is getting onto more menus with a wider range of serves that work across different occasions and different parts of the evening. Consumers aren’t remotely ready for a conversation about terroir in a spirit most of them are only just rediscovering. Win the menu battle first. For a drink as good as pisco, everything else will follow!

Pisco to tequila; like chalk to cheese

I get asked this constantly, so let’s settle it: pisco is not going to rival tequila any time soon. Tequila has a cultural head start that’s almost impossible to overstate, particularly in the US, and an extraordinary weight of big-brand investment dragging consumers into the category through margaritas and palomas. I won’t say never, because categories move in odd ways, given a long enough time frame, but it’s a long way off. What pisco can be, and should aim to be, is a genuinely interesting alternative on its own terms, not a pretender to someone else’s throne.

And that’s where education comes in – but I don’t think that education should be focused on the bar. I don’t think UK bars desperately need teaching about South American drinks. The pisco sour and the caipirinha are classic serves, they’re in every bartender’s handbook, and they cycle on and off menus the way classics always do. What we owe the category is more availability. Get the right liquid onto the right back bars and let people who already know what they’re doing get on with it. The bigger gap (if there is one) sits with us as suppliers and importers, not with the bartenders pouring the drinks.

I was at Bar Convent Brooklyn recently, and what struck me, as it always does at these shows, is how much energy there still is around discovery: new brands, new partners, old friends doing brilliant things in categories nobody was talking about five years ago. South America has earned its place in that conversation by producing some truly excellent liquids. The job is now with us to make sure we bring these stellar liquids to the lips of the masses. As it stands the UK is only the 10th largest export market for pisco – I’d like to see us do more. Because these are liquids that are truly good enough to deserve it.

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