Drinking in Bolivia

Even if you’re after just a tipple, sipping a glass of wine or having a cool one at high altitude can have a cost. Nonetheless, once you are acclimatized, there are some interesting beverages to sample.

Beer

Each major city still has its own brewery, generally founded by Germans who emigrated here. In La Paz, Paceña offers a standard brew but also often has special labels that are always worth trying. Sureña in Sucre is a good bet. Microbreweries have started to pop up; the best are Saya and Kushaav in La Paz, Ted’s in Sucre, and Stier in Cochabamba. There’s also the CBN, the national beer company. Avoid the Carnival beer, Bock–it has more alcohol than Carnival spirit.

Liquor

For something a little different, try singani, the local brandy distilled from Muscat de Alexandria grapes. It’s best in the potent sour made with lime juice or the slightly smoother chuflay, made with ginger ale. The finer Tarijeño singanis are good for sipping, slightly chilled. One winery, La Concepción, makes a barrel-aged version called Tarixa, which is hard to find but worth the huntit’s reminiscent of a good Cognac. Chicha is a grain alcohol that locals traditionally concocted by chewing maize, spitting out the resulting mash, adding water, and allowing the mixture to ferment. The process in most places has, however, been modernized and the chance of your drinking the masticated kind is actually quite slim. The sweet, rather cloudy result is drunk mainly in the lowland valleys in and around Cochabamba, and tastes a lot better than it sounds.

Wine

Tarija, in the Andean foothills near the Argentine border, is Bolivia’s wine-growing area. Grapes grow here at over 2,000 meters (6,560 feet) above sea level, and wine has been produced since the early 17th century. The major producers are Aranjuez, La Concepcion, Casa Grande, Campos de Solana, and Kohlberg, although you can also buy some interesting unlabeled wines in the bodegas. The industry is only recently beginning to modernize, and trained winemakers are scarce, but Tarija’s Tannat, Malbec, and Cabernet Sauvignon have already won international medals. There is also some promise for dry white wines made from the Muscat de Alexandria grape, which has been used for singani for almost four centuries and is well adapted to local conditions.