PiscoSF

This app is a convenient portable version of the recently published cocktail history book titled History of Pisco in San Francisco: A Scrapbook of First Hand Accounts.

It presents first hand historical documentation related to the history of pisco brandy, Pisco Punch and Pisco Sour in San Francisco, California. It includes original oral histories, pictures of people, places and antique objects, advertisements, newspaper clippings, letters, legal documents, old cocktail recipes and more –much of it published for the first time. A fast to read book full of first hand historical information and an excellent reference book for any serious mixologist.

The print publication has received good reviews by several “piscophiles,” among them famed cocktail historian David Wondrich, author of Imbibe!, who recently wrote “I expect that this excellent, useful and instructive work will inspire people to attempt this sort of project and can only hope that they have Mr. Toro-Lira’s tenacity and talent as a researcher.”

IMPORTANT: You use this app simply as flipping a book when the device is in portrait mode. When turning it sideways, the zoom capabilities of the iPhone/iPad will automatically be enabled allowing you to browse and pinch magnify within any particular folio, thus providing the functionality of a “magnifying glass” used to inspect in more detail any historical document or image of interest.

Due to the large amount of high resolution graphics, this app is optimized for arm7 architecture devices (iPhone3GS, iPhone4 and iPad). Although it works with arm6 devices (iPhone, iPhone3G), the flip page animation functionality for this latter devices will not be present.

Also, because of its relative large size this app can only be downloaded using a WiFi connection.

UPDATE - 4/1/11 History of Pisco in San Francisco: A Scrapbook of First Hand Accounts won Honorable Mention in the Gourmand Paris 2011 World Competition Awards in the category Best Drink History Book!!!