Chilean Chicha

We sat down by the fire and they immediately placed before us two good looking pitchers of chicha. My portion was clear, sweet and spicy, and the chief toasted me with it, saying that I should eat and drink…  Francisco Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán. 1673 (all translations mine) 

This drink is highly appreciated in Chile and rich families as well as the poor consume great quantities while it retains its sweetness.  Claudio Gay, 1841 

The Independence Day fiestas are coming soon and there will be no Chilean tables that don’t include a good meat empanada and a glass of chicha.   ElPeriodico.cl September, 2011[1]

From before the Spanish conquest to today chicha has been the most Chilean of drinks.  Whether the sweet strawberry chicha that the young soldier Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán enjoyed,  the stronger muday or corn chicha the Mapuche warriors drank, the apple chicha of Chiloé, or the grape chicha of central Chile, it has brought refreshment and cheer to Chileans for centuries, perhaps for millennia.

Chicha came to the attention of the European voyagers early.  On the fifth of August, 1498, Columbus came ashore in Venezuela and, according to the letter he wrote to the King, the Indians “…brought …. wine of many kinds white and red, but not of grapes. It must be of several kinds, one of one fruit and one of another and likewise one must be of maize, which is a seed which makes a spike like a cob…”

To the Spanish, all were “chicha,” a term which seems to have been part of several indigenous American languages. It was first documented in written Spanish in 1521, when a visitor to Panama noted that it was short for “chichah co-pah”, where “chichah” meant maize and “co-pah” drink.[2]  It came to be used generically for the fermented drinks of the Indians, replacing the native terms like the azúa of the Incas and the muday of the Mapuche of Chile.

Mapuche Chicha

Among the Mapuche, indigenous people of south central Chile, chicha made from grains or fruits was an integral part of social life. Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán writes about a gathering he attended in the 1620s:

To the chiefs they gave splendid food, various dishes of fish, shellfish, fowl, partridges, bacon, sausages, pastries, buñuelos, tomatoes, rolls of beans and maize, and other things, providing for each band according to the people it contained, one hundred or two hundred measures of chicha, because more commonly only twenty or thirty bands came together for ordinary drinking parties and feasts, but in this one there were more than fifty, with a daily consumption of more than four thousand jugs of chicha. And that was not a lot, because there were twelve or fourteen thousand souls at that feast, Indian men and women, girls [chinas] and boys.[3]

Jesuit Diego de Rosales, who was a missionary among the Mapuche in the 17^th century explains:

Chicha, which is like beer or our wine, is the joy of all get-togethers or parties and is the usual drink, because there are Indians who never drink water, but only chicha in their houses, and if it is lacking it there is an argument with the women that often ends in blows.  …They make chicha of all kinds, from grains like maize, wheat, barley, and from fruit like apples, pears, quince, strawberries, piñones [seeds of Araucaria araucana] murtilla [Chilean Guava, Ugni molinae) and other native fruit: they grind the grain, add yeast, heat it and when it is just right it is finished.

Mapuches making apple chicha -  Edmond Reuel Smith 1855[4]

When they have to make a lot of [maize] chicha for a large party, the women get together at night and in a circle with their milling stones they spend the whole night singing a funny song in which they keep time with the movements of their milling.  The old women and the little girls who don’t have the strength to mill (which takes a lot of strength) work in making yeast, which they do with the flour they are making, chewing it and putting it into some pitchers, and there is an old woman who grinds the yeast. This yeast and the ground flour they put in large pans of water that are on the fire, and this is the chicha at its beginning, which if kept for many days becomes sour and is strong like strong spicy vinegar. [5]

This method of making maize chicha, which Rosales describes above, was common throughout maize growing areas of central and South America.  It involves masticating ground coked maize, drying it, and then mixing it with more ground maize and water.  This was then brought to a boil and allowed to ferment.  By masticating the maize, enzymes in the saliva convert some of the starch into sugar, which is then available to yeasts for fermentation into alcohol. It is not “yeast” as Rosales thought, but is an alternative to malting (sprouting) grain, which accomplishes the same purpose. (No mastication was required for fruit chichas.)

Colonial Chilean chicha

Soon after the Spanish arrived in Chile, planting grapes was a high priority as wine was essential for religious observances and was an integral part of Spanish diet.  Vines arrived in Mexico as early as 1520, in Peru by 1540, and Chile the first vineyard was plated by Juan Jufré, first alcalde (mayor) of Santiago, probably around 1550 and wine production began shortly afterward.[6] 

But chicha isn’t exactly wine, it’s wine in the process of fermentation, and the origins of grape chicha, as distinct from wine, are unclear.  Chilean historian Eugenio Pereira Salas sees it as a “new drink” which, in the 18^th century was replacing wine, as the drink of the common people. It is first mentioned in 1760, when seen as responsible for death and disgraceful behavior caused by the “the boundless appetite of the common people who make it and who have given it the name chichita.”[7]

Pereria Salas sees chicha as a descendant of Mapuche muday, which is quite reasonable, but he notes that in Spain it would be known as “sagardúa,” from the Basque word for cider. In fact similar partially fermented wines are produced throughout Europe, under names that translate as “feather wine,” “new wine,” “young wine,” and in southern Spain as “mosto,” though none seem to be cooked before fermentation and it do not keep as long as chicha.

Claudio Gay, writing in the 1840s, explains how it Chilean chicha, now called (chicha cocida or chicha baya) was made:

It is preferably prepared from the juice of the sweetest grapes. This juice is given a light coking, frequently not reaching a boil, and after cooling, it is placed in sealed barrels. Form that point fermentation proceeds, producing a great deal of carbon dioxide which puts the barrel in risk if a pinhole is not carefully opened for the gas to escape. This pinhole is closed with a plug that is removed every two hours during the fermentation. The chicha thus produced is decanted into barrels for consumption. After six to eight days it can be drunk, and many people prefer it as it is then foamy and spicy, but it causes many burps and for this reason it is usually drunk only a month or two later. It doesn’t last long and by October it begins to oxidize and is used for distillation [into aguardiente].[8]

Chicha cruda, uncooked chicha, or chacolí was (and still is) also be made by simply allowing grape juice to ferment, but it must be drunk within a few days before it begins to turn to vinegar.

By the time Englishwoman Maria Grahm was in Chile, in the 1840s…

The liquor commonly drank by the lower classes is chicha, the regular descendant of that intoxicating chicha which the Spaniards found the South American savages possessed of the art of making, by chewing various berries and grains, spitting them into a large vessel, and allowing them to ferment. But the great and increasing demand for chicha has introduced a cleanlier way of making it ; and it is now in fact little other than harsh cider, the greater part being produced from apples, and flavored with the various berries which formerly supplied the whole of the Indian chicha.[9]

The chicha deliveryman[10]

Chilean chicha today

While there is bottled chicha in the supermarkets around the time of Chilean Independence day, September 18, most Chilean chicha is sold from barrels in fondas (booths) at independence day celebrations, picadas (cafes/bars), or at the rural chicharias where it is made.  This year we bought ours from the Valladares, artisanal producers in the town of Curacaví, 50 km or so from Santiago.

Their production techniques are virtually the same as those reported by Gay in the 1840s.  The grape juice is heated for several hours at a low temperature and when cool, sealed into tinajas, large earthenware jars, for fermentation.  They didn’t mention allowing the carbon dioxide to escape—perhaps the seal on the tinajas isn’t so tight as to build up destructive pressure. Then when the chicha has reached the point they wish, sweet but with good acidity and a bit of alcohol, it is decanted into barrels. 

Tinajas of chicha

Two strengths were available when we went, one quite sweet and the other less so and a bit more piquant.  We bought some of each, the piquant to drink then (they said that it wouldn’t last until the 18^th), and the sweet to save for the 18^th, about 10 days later.  It was about 1,500 pesos ($3.15) a liter.  They have chicha available year round.

Chicha de Curacaví

Chicha de Curacaví, chicha balla y curaora 

Chicha de Curacaví. Que ponis los pasos lentos

Chicha de Curacaví a mi no me los ponis

Cicha de Curacaví por que te pasó pa' entro

Chicha de Curacaví chicha valla y curaora

Se acabó la chichita alla va, lla va, tambien la

Se curó la cantora alla va, lla va, todos pa' fuera

Se acabó la chichita alla va, lla va, tambien la vela.

Todos pa' fuera ay si alla va, lla va, chicha en botella 
A la mujer celosa alla va, lla va, palos con ella.[11]

Which is, more or less, the following:

Chicha de Curacaví, cream colored and intoxicating

Chicha de Curacaví, that makes you step slowly

Chicha de Curacaví, but that doesn’t happen to me

Cicha de Curacaví because I put it inside me

Chicha de Curacaví, cream colored and intoxicating.

The chicha is all gone, there it goes, the candle is out too

The singer got drunk, there it goes, everyone goes out side

Everyone goes outside, there they go, chicha in a bottle

The jealous woman, there she goes, give her a whack.

And here’s a video with the music.

.

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[1] Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán, Francisco, 1608-1680. 2001. El cautiverio feliz, Tomo dos; edición crítica de Mario Ferreccio Podestá y Raïssa Kordić  Riquelme. Santiago de Chile: Seminario de Filología Hispánica, Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades, Universidad de Chile, p. 86. on line at http://books.google.cl/books?id=VOrKaGk48twC&printsec=frontcover&hl=en#v=onepage&q=&f=false; Gay, Claudia 1862 Agricultura Vol 2, p. 193. Chile: Museo de Historia Natural de Santiago online at http://www.memoriachilena.cl//temas/documentodetalle.asp?id=MC0002687; and Fierro, Verónica.  En fiestas patrias: ministerio de agricultura elegirá las mejores empanadas y chicha de todo chile.  ElPeriodico.cl  Sept. 11, 2011.

[2] Pardo, O. 2004. Las chichas en el chile precolombino. (basado en una trabajo presentado en el xii congreso ítalo-latinoamericano de etnomedicina "nuno álvares pereira" (Río de Janeiro, Brasil, 8-12 de Septiembre 2003). Chloris Chilensis año 7 nº 2. Url: http://www.chlorischile.cl.

[3] Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán, Op Cit. p. 207.

[4] Smith, Edmund Reuel. 1855. The Araucanians; or, Notes of a Tour among the Indian tribes of Southern Chile.  New York:  Harper & brothers. p. 278 On line at http://books.google.cl  

[5] Rosales, Diego de. 1877 (1674) Historia general de el Reyno de Chile: Flandes Indiano. Valpariso: Imprenta del Mercurio. Vol. I p. 155. on line at http://www.memoriachilena.cl//temas/documento_detalle.asp?id=MC0005271

[6] Pozo, José del.  1998. Historia del vino chileno desde 1850 hasta hoy. Santiago: Editorial Universitaria. P. 28.  On line at http://books.google.com

[7] Pereira Salas, Eugenio.  1977. Apuntes para la historia de la cocina chilena.  Santiago : Universitaria. p. 65 On line at http://www.memoriachilena.cl/temas/documentodetalle.asp?id=MC0006512

[8] Gay, Caludio. Op. cit. p.

[9] Graham, Maria. 1824. Journal of a Residence in Chile, During the Year 1822.  London: Longman, Hurst, etc. p. 127. On line at http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=Journal%20of%20a%20residence%20in%20Chile%20AND%20mediatype:texts

[10] Drawing by unknown author from Álbud de tioso chilenos de mediados del siglo diecinueve, Sociedad de Bibliófilo Chilenos, Santiago, 1987 as reproduced in Pozo, Jose, Op. cit. p. 39

[11] Anonymous Chilean folk song, on line at http://rescatemoselfolklore.blogspot.com/2011/01/chicha-de-curacavi.html

Chilean Pisco: “Aguardiente with the flavor of muscatel grapes”

Pisco, named for the Peruvian port from which it was first exported, is brandy made from grapes grown along the arid Pacific coasts of Peru and Chile. It is also a “Peruvian Flag Product,” a focus of Peruvian national pride and a continuing source of recrimination between Peru and Chile, where the name “Pisco” is also used; unfairly according to Peru.

 Peruvian Pisco                                                                    Chilean Pisco

And all this, of course, has historical origins:

As humans discovered by at least 10,000 years ago, when fruit juices or other sweet liquids are colonized by yeasts, the sugars are turned into alcohol and a gas (carbon dioxide) is released.   In fermentation of bread dough the CO2 makes bread rise, and fermentation of fruit juices makes alcohol, turning juice into wine.  But fermentation stops when alcohol levels approach 15%.  
  

By the 10^th century, the Chinese discovered that when the vapors from heated wine were condensed, the result was higher in alcohol that the original wine; they discovered distillation.  Distillation was familiar to the Arabs in the 11^th and 12^th centuries (“alcohol” is from the Arabic), and aguardiente, the result of distillation, was being used medicinally in Europe in the 16^th century.

Thus when the Spanish arrived in Chile in the 1540s, they were familiar with the medicinal use of distilled spirits and used aguardiente to treat battle wounds, illnesses, plagues and fevers.

Most Spanish aguardinete was made from wine (although any fermented product containing alcohol could be used) and

…the wine culture that came to Spaniards from Andalucía and Extremadura--thanks to their Arab heritage—allowed them to transfer the technology of distillation to Chilean viticulture. The Andalucian and  Extremaduran  conquistador-business men, situated in the north of the Kingdom of Chile found a territory ideally suited to develop their Spanish-Arab cultural tradition of the cultivation and harvest of grapes from the vines and vineyards brought into the country before 1548.  The dryness of the semiarid north, combined with the strong sun, ripened grapes with elevated concentrations of sugar and produced wines with a higher concentration of alcohol that those produced between Santiago and Concepción.  New Lands, new sun: a new product.[1]

The strong sweet wines that were that new product were also a good raw material for the production of aguardiente, which was being produced in Chile by 1558. 

Aguardiente was not necessarily produced from wine, however.  Wine was fermented with the skins, seeds, stems (and occasional foreign matter).  After fermentation this residue (orujos; “pomace” in English) was separated from the wine and pressed to extract the remaining liquid, which was then distilled to make aguardiente de orujos, or simply orujos. In Italy liquor produced in this manner is called grapa.[2]

“Unfortunately,” noted Claudio Gay, French botanist and naturalist in Chile in the 1830s “the method used, combined with the lack of cleanliness, always results in an unpleasant taste.  [This is because] the stills are so simple and imperfect.” 

The aguardientes de orujos, are made only on haciendas, especially in the south.

They are known by the unpleasant name of aguardiente de chivato [tattletale] because of their bad taste.  To eliminate it, they are distilled a second time, and in this form they are supplied to the merchants who mix them with aguardiente made from wine and perfume them with a few drops of  essence of anise from the apothecary.  

As a rule it is the lower classes, the peons, laborers, miners, who drink this Chilean aguardiente, and they drink a lot of it.

The Chileans also make aguardiente from peaches, pears, figs, etc., as well as from wheat, corn, barley and ultimately from rye. Wheat, especially bread wheat, is most used, because it produces a better and more abundant result. Aguardiente made from barley is sour, tastes scorched, and must be treated like aguardiente de chivato to make it tolerable.[3]

These pomace aguardientes, as well as those made from other sources of alcohol, continued to be made in the recent past, and are probably being made today.  Catalina Codelia Contreras’ thesis on clandestine production of aguardiente in Doñihue 1950-1980, explained that among the raw materials fermented as the first step in making aguardiente were:  “yeast and sugar, pears, very ripe apples or peaches with sugar, white grapes, pomace (that only needs sugar and water to ferment again), wine with sediments, wine and chicha [partially fermented wine], corn, etc.”[4]

But in Gay’s time as well as today, the better aguardientes  were made from wine.  One of the few modern Chilean aguardientes (sold under than name, and not as pisco) is Aguardiente Doñihue, “distilled from selected wines.”  At 100 proof (50%) alcohol and about $5 US a liter, it is not exactly sippin’ whisky, but it is very popular around Christmas and New Year for making cola de mono, “monkey’s tail,” a coffee flavored milk punch.

  

                          

Aguardiente is also the basis for a variety of flavored artisanal liqueurs, especially enguindao (or guindado or guindao) made from sour cherries, macerated in aguardiente for several months, then sweetened and bottled.

 

Guindas “sour cherries”                      

Enguindado in week one

Aguardiente de Pisco


Aguardiente was also being made in other areas of the Viceroyalty of Peru, which included Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina, as well as Peru and Chile. In Columbia, Ecuador and parts of Peru, the usual source material was sugar cane, but in the dry southern valley of the Rio Ica, 150 miles south of Lima, aguardiente was being made from grapes, both aromatic varieties like muscatel and from non-aromatic varieties.

Swiss naturalist and explorer Johann Jakob von Tschudi (1818-1889) visited the area in the 1830s and wrote[5]:

  Shortly there after, aguardiente de Pisco, now simply called “Pisco” arrived in California.

In 1839, early in the year, the brig Daniel O’Connell, an English vessel, Andrés Murcilla master, arrived at Yerba Buena from Payta, Peru, with a cargo of Peruvian and other foreign goods, having on board a considerable quantity of pisco or italia, a fine delicate liquor manufactured at a place called Pisco.[6]

Today Peruvian pisco is made in four legally defined styles: Pure, made from a single non-aromatic variety of grape; Aromatic, made from a single Muscat or other aromatic grape variety; Mosto Verde, made from partially ferment grape juice, and Alcholado, blended from two or more grape varieties, aromatic or non-aromatic.   It is legally defined as “Aguardiente obtained exclusively by distillation of fresh, recently fermented juice of pisco grapes (Quebranta, Negra Corriente, Mollar, Italia, Moscatel, Albilla, Torontel and Uvina) using methods that maintain the tradition of quality established in recognized production zones.” It must be made in these zones; distilled to between 38 and 42% alcohol, not diluted with water;  distilled in batches, not in continuous stills; and must be aged for at least three months in glass or stainless steel. It may not be aged in wood or include additions that would change its color or flavor. In short, it is an artisanal rather than an industrial product.  Many piscos are made to be drunk straight, and some piscos are produced to sell for high prices in the international prestige liquor market [7]

Chilean Pisco

Among the aguardientes made in Chile in the colonial period and after, the best were made from the strong sweet wines of the Norte Chico, discussed above, and especially those of the valley of the Rio Elqui, 300 miles north of Santiago.  With a reputed 340 days of sun a year, an elevation of 4,000 feet, clear hot days and cold nights, the environment is ideal for grape varieties like Muscat and Pedro Jiménes, Chilean counterparts of the grapes used for sherry in Spain.  They produce wines with floral aromas and high levels of alcohol.  And, according to Chilean historian Cortés Olivares, they were called “pisco:”  

…by the end of the 18th and throughout the 19th century, the use of the word “Pisco” was commonly used in Chilean society to refer to aguardiente with aromatic characteristics, alcohol content and production techniques required for special grape varieties, in contrast to the aguardiente produced south of Aconagua from pomace or wine with sediments.[8]

Vineyards in the Valley of the Rio Elqui

Like Peruvian pisco, Chilean pisco was originally produced in small quantities in pot stills, but today most is produced by industrial methods using continuous distillation and is distilled to 60 to 73% alcohol, then diluted.  It is produced in four grades: common or traditional pisco at 30% alcohol, Especial at 35%, Reserva at 40%,  and Gran Pisco at 43%.   In addition to the alcohol content, higher grades of pisco may be made from all or a higher percentage of aromatic grapes.  Some piscos are also aged in wood for varying periods of time, producing smoother amber-tinted piscos with characteristic wood flavors for drinking unmixed.

 19^th century pot still at Pisco Mistral distillery

 

One pisco that continues to be distilled in batches in pot stills is Pisco Mistral.  See their website for a virtual tour.

Today pisco especial is the pisco most commonly found in supermarkets and liquor stores, with a price of about 2,000 CLP ($4 US) a bottle. It is usually drunk in the ubiquitous pisco sour, or as piscola (pisco + cola), a name many native English speakers find appropriate. 

Other pisco sour recipes include egg white, replace the simple syrup with powdered sugar, or use Key limes (lemon de pica), but this is the one I prefer.  It is usually served in a Champagne flute.

The controversy

Peru objects to the use of the term pisco, named after a Peruvian port, for Chilean aguardiente.  Peruvian Ambassador Gonzalo Gutierrez Reinel, Vice-Minister Secretary General of Foreign Affairs, argues that:

There is only one pisco, simply because only one product in the world meets the requirements of the appellation of origin for this type of goods. According to the definition given by the Lisbon Agreement of the World Intellectual Property Organization, to be granted an appellation of origin, a product must be prepared in a distinctive way through particular production methods and interaction between men and their land. In addition, the product takes up the name of the place where it is manufactured. Such is the case of pisco: in the world, there is only one place called Pisco where this fine liquor is prepared, and where specific climate characteristics and a precise production method converge. And this place is in Peru.[9] 

Chile disagrees, arguing that the term pisco has been used in both counties for over 200 years.  And of course, there is now a town called Pisco in Chile too:  in 1936 Chilean Law Decree 5.798 changed the name of the town "La Unión," a center of pisco production, to "Pisco Elqui.”[10]   I don’t know whether that strengthens or weakens Chile’s case, but it’s a very nice town.

 The plaza in Pisco Elqui.

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[1] Cortés Olivares,  Hernán F.  2005 El origen, producción y comercio del pisco Chileno,

1546-1931.  Revista Universum (Universidad de Talca)  20(2):48.  On line at http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0718-23762005000200005 ..

[2] Iglesias, Pepe.  2006.  Historia del aguardiente. Historia de la cocina. On line at http://www.historiacocina.com/historia/articulos/aguardiente.htm

[3] Gay, Claudio. 1862-1865.  Agricultura, Tomo 2. París: En casa del autor; Chile: Museo de Historia Natural de Santiago, p. 202-213 On line at http://www.memoriachilena.cl/temas/documentodetalle.asp?id=MC0002688

[4] Codelia Contreras, Catalina. 2004. Trabajo informal en una zona rural: La producción clandestina de aguardiente en Doñihue, 1950-1980. BA thesis in history, University of Chile. On line at http://www.cybertesis.cl/tesis/uchile/2004/codelia_c/html/index-frames.html

[5] Tschudi,  Dr. J. J. von.  1847. Travels in Peru, during the years 1838-1842. Thomasina Ross, translator. New York: Wiley and Putnam. p.164.  On line at http://books.google.cl/books?id=J6UaAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Travels+in+peru&hl=en&cd=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

[6] Davis, William Heath. 1929. Seventy-five Years in San Francisco.  Second Edition,
Edited by Douglas S. Watson San Francisco: John Howell. Chapter 38. ) On line at http://www.sfgenealogy.com/sf/history/hb75ym.htm

[7] "Aguardiente obtenido exclusivamente por destilación de mostos frescos de uvas pisqueras (Quebranta, Negra Corriente, Mollar, Italia, Moscatel, Albilla, Torontel y Uvina) recientemente fermentados, utilizando métodos que mantengan el principio tradicional de calidad establecido en las zonas de producción reconocidas". Pisco del Perú, Wikipedia, La enciclopedia libre.  On line at http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisco_del_Perú

[8] Cortés Olivares, op. cit. p. 54

[9] Exclusive Peruvian appellation of origin, The words of an expert. Cona Pisco: Comisión Nacional de Pisco. On line at http://www.conapisco.org.pe/EN/deno-entrevista.htm

[10] Pisco.  Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. On line at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisco