As mixology goes on and on, the search for new local ingredients becomes a necessity. New spirits become famous and others are left aside. A great example of the first is that of Pisco. Today you can find pisco everywhere. Almost every bar keeps at least one bottle in the shelf, even if many clients ignore its existence, though others are great fans of the cocktails created from it.

I truly cannot deny its unique nature as a spirit, but I can totally compare it to greek Tsipouro.

Tsipouro is a pomace brandy from Greece that contains 40-45% ABV (or higher if you look for local brands) and comes pure, flavoured with anise or aged. Eventually, I have come to a point to compare Pisco and Tsipouro (pure), coming to the result that they are pretty identical and only having small difference according to the producer. So putting down two identical products (in terms of aroma, flavour and colour) the only criteria to choose one from the other is the price tag and maybe even the anise version of Tsipouro, which can be really interesting and even used in the place of anisette.

So the big question here is, if we can substitute pisco with tsipouro (pure). The answer is yes. I will include some recipes with tsipouro to experiment on, or you could try any Pisco recipe you currently like with tsipouro.

Tsipouro Sour

50ml Tsipouro (pure)
25ml fresh lemon juice
20ml simple syrup
1 egg white
1 dash angostura bitter s

El Capitan

50ml Tsipouro (pure)
25ml Sweet Vermouth (I like to use Cinzano Rosso)
2 dash aromatic bitters (I prefer De Kuyper classic bitters for this one)

Cheers!