In queso you didn’t know, you might soon be able to up your cocktail game with an unexpected flavour: nacho cheese Doritos.
On Tuesday, the chip brand revealed an unexpected collaboration with the Copenhagen-based distillery Empirical, who created a cheese-flavoured booze that they claim tastes “just like the real thing.”
The Empirical x Doritos Nacho Cheese Spirit is an 84-proof clear liquor. Like all the alcohol created by Empirical, the Doritos spirit is “uncategorized,” meaning it doesn’t abide by the strict rules for categorization of other liquors like gin or whisky.
“The result is as crazy as it sounds,” the company wrote on its website. “Empirical and Doritos Nacho Cheese offers an unexpected delicious experience that brings a moment of WTF!? to anyone who tries it.”
The Doritos spirit — which has tasting notes of nacho cheese, corn tostada, umami and a hint of acidity — will be available only for a limited time.
Empirical credited their vacuum distillation process, which sees the flavour of ingredients distilled and preserved using a low-temperature boil, for being able to capture the iconic Doritos flavour.
The base of the spirit is a pilsner malt distillate, but the flavour profile really does come from actual Doritos chips themselves.
In a promotional video, Lars Williams, the chef, distiller and CEO of Empirical, said the company specializes in taking unique flavours, like Doritos, and making it “into something that’s even more interesting.”
Williams and Mark Emil Hermansen together launched Empirical in 2017 after both men left their jobs at the three-Michelin-star Danish restaurant Noma.
Williams said the inspiration for the Doritos spirit came from a colleague’s lunch. After the employee returned to the Empirical workspace with a sandwich and a bag of Doritos, Williams said he confiscated the salty, cheesy snack for the sake of innovation.
“We tried it, and the result was amazing,” Williams said of the distilled Doritos spirit. “It made us start laughing hysterically.”
From there, Empirical reached out to Frito-Lay, the company that owns Doritos, to establish the official partnership. (Frito-Lay is a subsidiary of PepsiCo.)
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Empirical x Doritos Nacho Cheese Spirit is the first-ever official Doritos-based booze to be created.
Empirical began taking pre-orders on for the Doritos liquor on Wednesday, with a planned delivery date of January 2024. A 750-millilitre bottle costs US$65.
As of now, Empirical is only delivering to American zip codes. Canadians eager to try the nacho cheese-flavoured booze might have to go across the border or ask an American friend for a favour, and hopefully they won’t find the gimmick too cheesy.
What does it really taste like?
M. Carrie Allan, a reporter with the Washington Post, had the honour of trying the Empirical x Doritos Nacho Cheese Spirit prior to its release.
Like many, Allan wrote that she “would have dismissed it as a pure stunt bottling,” but her experience was anything if not convincing.
“When I lowered my snout into a tasting glass of this stuff, damned if I wasn’t swept into a powerful, sensual memory of inhaling Doritos on a lunch break in my car, back during my divorce in 2004,” Allan wrote.
Brad Japhe of Food and Wine magazine said that “one sniff of the spirit is enough to reveal its anchor ingredient.”
If shooting liquor straight — especially of the cheese-based variety — isn’t your speed, don’t worry. Empirical has shared three different cocktail recipes that feature the Doritos spirit: a Bloody Mary, a Margarita and a Pepsi-based Bangarang.
Doritos is far from the first brand to make the jump into another niche, unconventional food and drink space. In July, Skittles teamed up with the condiment company French’s to create limited edition mustard-flavoured Skittles.
The public reaction at the time, akin to the response to the Empirical x Doritos Nacho Cheese Spirit, was mostly, “Why?”
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