The film Piconland: The Quest for the Perfect Picon Punch is a 25-minute answer to a common question: What on earth is a picon punch? Mark Maynard, author and Truckee Meadows Community College professor, is the film’s writer and director. He traveled, along with cinematographer Richard Bednarski, to Basque bars in towns including Winnemucca, Elko, Gardnerville and Reno to investigate the history, culture and lore of the beloved Nevada cocktail.
The film, first released in 2023, featured perspectives from bartenders who make picons, the customers who drink them, and others. This year, the filmmakers released a new cut including interviews with state legislators who got the picon punch designated as the official state cocktail in 2025.
Piconland has been screened at film festivals as far away as Paris and Albania. It’s racked up a few awards, including “Best Nevada Film” at the 2023 Dam Short Film Festival in Boulder City. This summer, Nevada Humanities is hosting two Northern Nevada screenings, followed by conversations with Maynard, Etienne Lekumberry of the J.T. Basque Bar and Dining Room in Gardnerville, and Ferino Distillery owner Joe Cannella, who launched the first canned picon punch in May. The first screening is from 3 to 5 p.m., Saturday, June 27, at CVIC Hall, 1602 Esmeralda Ave., in Minden. The second is from 1 to 3 p.m., Saturday, July 18 at Ferino Distillery, 541 E. Fourth St., in Reno.
What inspired you to want to make this film?
I was in a graduate class at the journalism program at (the University of Nevada, Reno) with Kari Barber, a wonderful documentary filmmaker in her own right, and we all had to pitch an idea for a film. I grew up in Nevada and just loved the ritual that I always saw in the old Basque places of a picon.
It seems like the film has had quite a life since you first released it.
We debuted it at the Student Film Festival at UNR. We decided to enter it in other festivals, and it’s played far and wide. It’s played at the Cordillera (International Film Festival) here in Reno. The farthest it’s played was Albania. I got to go and screen it in Paris, which was amazing. We think we made the first picon punch in Paris. We didn’t have all the ingredients, but we tried our best. Montana; Austin, Texas—it’s been fun to take it around the country and to take it places where people know what (a picon punch) is and are celebrating it, and to take it places where people have never heard of it and are really glad that they got to learn about it.
How do the reactions vary between Nevada viewers and, say, European viewers?
We get a lot of people who want to talk after screenings, which is always a great feeling. In Nevada, people want to tell you their best picon story, and usually, the picon is centered around a big night that they remember—or don’t remember. And in places where people aren’t familiar with it, they have all kinds of questions: What does it taste like? What’s in it? How do you make it? How can I get that liquor? Can I buy that here in New York or Montana?
How many picons did you drink during the making of this film?
Lost count! But there were these moments when we would do a setup and have a bartender make three or four and do these beauty shots—several takes and angles of them. And then we’d finish (shooting) and thank them, and the bartender would say, “Well, you know, these aren’t going to drink themselves, guys.” So, we definitely had to build a tolerance.
We actually shot some B-roll at my house, and we ended up making what we called “stunt picons.” We had to use some flat Coca-Cola and other things to get the color just right. It’s sort of sacrilegious to pour one out. But when you’re shooting a line of seven of them, and you’ve still got to manage camera gear and stuff like that—we had to be careful.
What’s one notable thing you’ve learned working on this project?
It’s a Basque-American cocktail, but it’s not a Basque cocktail. You can’t find it in the Basque country. The person it’s named after, Gaëtan Picon, was born in what we would think of as Italy, because he was born in Genoa. At the time he was born there, Genoa was a French colonial thing. So, he was really French, and he didn’t start brewing it or distilling it until he went to Algiers (in North Africa). … Then makes its way to France, and the liquor makes its way to San Francisco. That then becomes the official state cocktail in Nevada. It’s very American. It’s really a story about immigration.