The Elqui Valley

Pisco has been enjoyed by Chileans for more than four centuries, but it wasn’t until the 1930s that it was organized into an effective commercial industry, starting with the official creation of a pisco denominación de origen. Shortly afterwards, a large number of growers, who’d always been at the mercy of the private distilleries for the price they got for their grapes, joined together to form cooperatives to produce their own pisco. The largest were the tongue-twisting Sociedad Cooperativa Control Pisquero de Elqui y Vitivinículo de Norte Ltda (known as “Pisco Control”) and the Cooperativa Agrícola y Pisquera del Elqui Ltda (known as “Pisco Capel”), today the two most important producers in Chile, accounting for over ninety percent of all pisco to hit the shops.

The basic distillation technique is the same one that’s been used since colonial times: in short, the fermented wine is boiled in copper stills at 90°C, releasing vapours that are condensed, then kept in oak vats for three to six months. The alcohol – of 55° to 65° – is then diluted with water, according to the type of pisco it’s being sold as: 30° or 32° for Selección; 35° for Reservado; 40° for Especial; and 43°, 46° and 50° for Gran Pisco. It’s most commonly consumed as a tangy, refreshing aperitif known as Pisco Sour, an ice-cold mix of pisco, lemon juice and sugar – sometimes with whisked egg-white for a frothy head and angostura bitters for an extra zing.

Note that the Peruvians also produce pisco and consider their own to be the only authentic sort, maintaining that the Chilean stuff is nothing short of counterfeit. The Chileans, of course, pass this off as jealousy, insisting that their pisco is far superior (it is certainly grapier) and proudly claiming that pisco is a Chilean, not Peruvian, drink. Whoever produced it first, there’s no denying that the pisco lovingly distilled in the Elqui Valley is absolutely delicious, drunk neat or in a cocktail. A visit to one of the distilleries in the region is not to be missed – if only for the free tasting at the end.

Possibly even more than its pisco, the Elqui Valley’s greatest source of pride is Gabriela Mistral, born in Vicuña in 1889 and, in 1945, the first Latin American to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. A schoolmistress, a confirmed spinster and a deeply religious woman, Mistral’s poetry reveals an aching sensitivity and passion, and her much romanticized life was punctuated with tragedy and grief.

Lucila Godoy de Alcayaga, as she was christened, was just 3 years old when her father abandoned the family, the first of several experiences of loss in her life. It was left to her older sister, Emiliana, to support her and her mother, and for the next eight years the three of them lived in the schoolhouse in the village of Montegrande, where Emiliana worked as a teacher. At the age of 14, she started work herself as an assistant schoolteacher, in a village close to La Serena. It was here, also, that she took her first steps into the world of literature, publishing several pieces in the local newspaper under the pseudonyms “Alguien” (“Someone”), “Soledad” (“Solitude”) and “Alma” (“Soul”). When she was 20 years old, a railway worker, Romelio Ureta, who for three years had been asking her to marry him, committed suicide; in his pocket, a card was found bearing her name.

Although it would seem that his love for her was unrequited, the intense grief caused by Ureta’s suicide was to inform much of Mistral’s intensely morbid poetry, to which she devoted her time with increasing dedication while supporting herself with a series of teaching posts. In 1914 she won first prize in an important national poetry competition with Los Sonetos de la Muerte (Sonnets of Death), and in 1922 her first collection of verse was published under the title Desolación (Desolation), followed a couple of years later by a second collection, Ternura (Tenderness). Her work received international acclaim, and in recognition the Chilean Government offered Gabriela Mistral a position in the consular service, allowing her to concentrate almost exclusively on her poetry; here the parallel with Pablo Neruda is at its strongest. As consul, she spent many years abroad, particularly in the US, but her poems continued to look back to Chile, particularly her beloved Elqui Valley, which she described as “a cry of nature rising amidst the opaque mountains and intense blue sky”. Her most frequently recurring themes, however, were her love of children and her perceived sorrow at her childlessness.

Gabriela Mistral did however serve as a surrogate mother for her adored nephew, Juan Miguel or “Yin Yin”, who had been placed in her care when he was just 9 months old. Once again, though, tragedy struck: at the age of 17, Yin Yin committed suicide in Brazil, where she was serving as consul. It was a loss from which she never recovered, and for which her Nobel Prize, awarded two years later, could do little to console her. Gabriela Mistral outlived her nephew by twelve years, and in 1957, at the age of 67, she died in New York of cancer of the pancreas, leaving the proceeds of all her works published in South America to the children of Montegrande.