Norte Chile - A Lesson in Pisco

To contact us Click HERE
I was fortunate enough to receive a Fulbright to spend three months teaching and conducting research associated with the Chinchorro culture in northern Chile this spring. I will cover the specifics about the research in a future post. I arrived February 24th, traveling from Albany to Atlanta, Santiago and finally landed in Arica where I will spend most of my time. I don't necessarily just want this to become a travel blog with tips, but if you are thinking of traveling with a lot of camera equipment and a laptop I HIGHLY recommend the Naneu K4L bag, I picked this up for the trip and so far it is just awesome!


View Larger Map

After spending the day exploring downtown Arica, I traveled to Putre, a quaint Aymaran village in the highlands to visit my friend Angel. Putre is just outside Lauca National Park and a gateway to the higher elevation, snow covered Andes. The areas surrounding Putre is dominated by exposures of Holocene and Pleistocene age pyroclastics, Miocene andesites and dacites, and ignimbrites of the Oligocene Oxaya Formation. I made a quick geology map of the area surrounding Putre from a paper map I georeferenced but haven't yet digitized so there isn't a legend for the geologic map (but you'll get the gist).


And here are just a few photos taken in the Putre area, mostly focusing on geologic landscapes.


While I was obviously fascinated with the landscape and the completely impenetrable Aymaran language, I was most taken with a short-course delivered by my hosts on the importance of pisco in the Peruvian/Chilean culture. I have had pisco many times, I even have a bottle at home in the US, but I had never been properly educated about the varieties, the distillation process or even how one might 'properly' drink it. I was incredibly fortunate that two of my hosts, Angel's girlfriend and her brother, are part of the Parede's family and originally from the Moquegua Valley in southern Peru. As it turns out, the Parede's operation is 'famous' in Peru for making exquisite pisco and the family has won numerous awards.

The particular bottle we enjoyed was 'Pisco Paredes 4' named for the 4 Paredes brothers who run the business. I was given the honor of first taste by filling the cap and instructed to let the pisco sit on my tongue and then exhale through my nose as I swallowed to enjoy the aromatic nature. It was a very smooth and semi-fruity sensation with none of the burning I've experienced with other piscos. Their favorite family cocktail includes a healthy pour of pisco topped off with ginger ale and a squeeze of lime. Marie and her brother also explained the bottle insignia, which includes a single cowboy riding a horse pressed in a copper color. This copper color is tied to the rich history of copper mining int he Moquegua Valley - dominated by the Cuajone Copper Mine.


View Larger Map
Interestingly, many of the gold and silver mines of the Moquegua region are US owned (in some form or another) and this fact is not lost on the locals. However, they still have a close connection with the mining community and are proud of their natural resources - even if Peru is not reaping the majority of the benefits. And yet, they seem more proud of their pisco and after helping them finish a bottle at ~8,000 feet I can assure you they have every right to be proud!

For those more geology-minded you can learn more about the Cuajone mine here: