‘Your favourite snack in a liquid form’: Doritos Nacho Cheese-flavoured booze? It’s a thing – and has been made by Copenhagen’s Empirical Spirits

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The partnership with Doritos – the most popular savoury snack among Gen Z and the 8th-ranked brand overall – is the most commercial offering yet from Empirical Spirits, a distillery based in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Empirical and Doritos have collaborated on a nacho cheese tortilla chip-flavoured spirit. Photo: Empirical

The limited release of the drink, available at doritos.x.empirical.co and at to-be-announced locations in New York and California, will go for US$65 for a 750 millilitre (25 ounce) bottle. The companies did not disclose the number of bottles they are releasing.

“We’re doing more disruptive partnerships,” says Courtney Larson, Dorito’s senior director of marketing. “When one of the most innovative flavour leaders in the world reaches out to you, you take notice.”

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Empirical was started by Lars Williams and Mark Emil Hermansen, both veterans of the kitchen at Copenhagen’s Noma restaurant – one of the world’s top restaurants. Williams oversaw the mad-scientist experiments in the restaurant’s Nordic Food Lab.

Its unconventional releases so far have included Symphony 6, a citrus, light pink distillation of Pilsner malt, lemon leaf, figs and coffee. A line of canned cocktails in 2020 used ingredients like toasted birch tea and Douglas fir infusion.

The Doritos partnership is a “chance for us to get out in front of a whole new group of people, and showcase what Empirical can do,” says Williams.

Though PepsiCo is not paying for the partnership, they are supplying the chips: Williams estimates that they use a standard, 78-gram (2¾-ounce) bag in each bottle of the 42 per cent ABV product.

Empirical x Doritos Mary Mary Bloody Mary cocktail. Photo: Empirical

So, what does it taste like?

Empirical’s own tasting notes claim that the spirit “tastes like the real thing”.

“Experience the indulgent flavours of your favourite snack in a liquid form,” says its website. “The spirit opens with umami and tangy aromas of nacho cheese, moving to the deeper, corn-forward flavours of the chip to finish on a soft salty note.”

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In our taste test, Empirical’s liquid tastes uncannily like a bag of Doritos Nacho Cheese flavoured tortilla chips. From the first whiff, there is an instant hit of corn, then the follow-up of nacho-cheese powder.

Then when you take a sip, any initial scepticism may well dissolve, depending on your tolerance for the flavours of toasted corn, as well as the cheese and onion powder that define so much of that Doritos flavour hit, in liquid form.

If you do not want the full unvarnished experience, there are some cocktail recipes included to help maximise the corn and cheese powder kick, including the Double Triangle Margarita and a Bloody Mary incarnation. They were formulated by Iain Griffiths, who has worked at the acclaimed Mr Lyan bars in London.
The Double Triangle is a spin on the Margarita, with the Empirical x Doritos spirit in place of triple sec. Photo: Empirical

The Doritos Nacho Cheese flavour has been hanging out in Empirical’s lab for a while, according to Williams. The original version was made around the time the brand started in 2017.

“One production guy went out to lunch and came back with a bag of Doritos,” says Williams. “I decided, ‘why not’ and threw it in.” The impact of the infusion was shockingly successful.

“When I tasted it, it was so much like Doritos, I just started laughing,” says Williams. But he ruled it out as an early Empirical flavour in favour of more artisanal blends.

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Not long after Empirical launched, however, a handful of PepsiCo executives ate at Noma and then, according to Williams, stopped by the lab.

“I was clear with the team, do not give them the Doritos spirit, there’s a 99 per cent chance we’ll get sued,” says Williams. Instead, it was applauded.

Williams says he recently came across a bottle of the spirit and decided it might be time for a Doritos Nacho Cheese-flavoured spirit to become reality.

Doritos has no current plans to extend the collaboration once the run is sold out, but there is a “very strong possibility we will renew”, says Larson.

The Doritos After Dark platform is encouraging its fans to cook more with the chips, whether throwing them into cookies or crushing them to form a salty rim of a cocktail glass. “We want to be creators in the culinary space.”

The Empirical release could also be the beginning of a line of Doritos-meets-booze products. “I think there might be more,” says Larson.

If production is extended beyond the initial limited release, Williams says the Doritos flavour will be available when Empirical opens a 5,000 sq ft (465 square metre) distillery in Brooklyn, New York early in 2024.

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