En route to Machu Picchu from Cuzco via the Sacred Valley, our bus stopped at a small building to give our tour a taste of the local version of a slightly alcoholic, fermented drink called “chicha”. You may have had “chicha morada”, a drink made from purple corn, at a Peruvian restaurant. Much like it’s non-alcoholic cousin, chicha is made from yellow corn that is very common to the country, but is the drink is apparently difficult to find in the cities, as it’s traditionally a family drink. There’s usually two common varieties, a plain version, which tasted slightly malty with a hint of booziness, and a version called fruitillada which is flavored with strawberries.
The traditional method of preparing chicha starts with the women brewers breaking down the corn, specifically by chewing the kernels and spitting them into a bucket to start the fermentation process. I did not ask whether the cloudy chicha I was enjoying was prepared the traditional way.
