From Kawashima’s golden pyramid we head back in time to the second half of the nineteenth century, when gold discovered in San Francisco created a mad rush to the west coast in search of more.   Panning was hard, dirty and dangerous work, which called for a well-earned beverage at the end of a hot day (or at the beginning, too, I’m sure).  Everyone headed to the legendary Bank Exchange bar, situated where the Transamerica pyramid building now stands, for its world renowned Pisco Punch.  Pisco, a type of funky clear brandy, had been brought up from South America by Peruvian and Chilean prospectors, and found glory in the tightly held, secret recipe for the punch made famous at the Bank Exchange.  The bar’s owners took the recipe to their graves, but the bar manager eventually revealed it, and the California Historical Society published it in 1973.   

Pyramid Punch by Simon Difford

In Rudyard Kipling's 1889 epic

From Sea to Sea, he immortalized Pisco Punch as being "compounded of the shavings of cherub's wings, the glory of a tropical dawn, the red clouds of sunset and the fragments of lost epics by dead masters".  Indeed.  The spirits writer Simon Difford, who started the very first spirits trade journal, “CLASS” in the late 1990’s, created this variation of the classic in 2006, which he called “Pyramid Punch” in reference to the site of the former Bank Exchange bar where Pisco Punch was born.  Here’s to striking gold, celebrating the present with a nod to the past, and finding the peaks on the pyramid of life.  Cheers!

These pyramids pack a punch

Pyramid Punch by Simon Difford

2 oz pisco (BarSol Mosto Verde Italia)

1 oz elderflower liqueur (St. Germain)

2 oz fresh pressed pineapple juice

½ oz fresh grapefruit juice

2 cloves

Muddle cloves in a mixing tin. Shake together with all other ingredients and ice to chill, strain into a tall glass.  Pineapple and lime peel boxing glove garnish.  Enjoy with a mouth guard if you can’t take a punch.