History

This Beloved South American Spirit Sparked A Bitter, Decades-Long Feud By Mariana Zapata Nov. 12, 2025 4:20 pm EST

For some reason, people are extremely touchy about food. Certain dishes can cause passionate arguments at the dinner table . Others, spark cultural wars between countries. This is the case with pisco, a grape-based brandy that's caused a centuries-old riff between Peru and Chile. Each country discredits the other's claims to the spirit. Peru argues that the distilled drink was first produced after Spanish colonization and was named after the port of Pisco, from where it was exported around the world. Chile says that the name comes from the town of Pisco Elqui, pointing to the fact that the first commercial piscos were Chilean.

Neither country had a defin

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