Like many issues within the booze business, it began with a press launch.
Arriving in my inbox in late March, it described a “technically advanced” but “enjoyable” cocktail consisting of olive oil-washed Gray Goose, Lustau Blanco vermouth, and G.E. Massenez Backyard Celebration Dried Tomato Liqueur, garnished with goat-cheese-stuffed charred olives.
This was the Pizza Martini from The Flatiron’s Room.
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Why was one of many nation’s most awarded whiskey bars now hawking a pizza-flavored cocktail?
“A quintessential New York spot just like the Flatiron Room deserves a nod to one thing equally iconic — like a New York slice,” Ben Wald, the bar’s head of beverage programming, advised me.
Perhaps. However, because the final 20 years have proven, pizza-flavored booze can be extremely efficient at getting consideration and press.
(Certainly, inside days, the Pizza Martini scored a pleasant write-up on Forbes.)
Nobody’s ever requested for it. Nobody appears to truly need it. But bartenders, distillers, brewers, and others can’t assist themselves from attempting to engineer the right pizza-flavored cocktail, spirit, or beer.
The First Ever?
Earlier this yr, the Windfall-based Industrious Spirit Firm launched Li’l Rhody Pizza Strip, a vodka made out of wheat, spices, and pizza strips, a Rhode Island staple. It acquired a smattering of press, after all, which rapidly led to the launch of Pizza Vodka, distilled from natural wheat, herbs and spices, tomatoes, and contemporary mozzarella cheese. The distillery touted it as “the primary ever pizza vodka?” (query mark theirs).
But when it was, it actually wasn’t the primary pizza spirit.
Again in 2017, Columbus, Ohio-based 451 Spirits partnered with native pizzeria Late Evening Slice to make a pechuga-style whiskey utilizing precise pizza. Their unaged white whiskey was redistilled with pizza slices, then once more with sun-dried tomato, basil, and garlic. The end result: Pizza Pie’Chuga.
“I needed to create one thing comparable (to a traditional mezcal pechuga) for myself,” mentioned co-founder and chief distiller Chad Kessler on the time. “I considered what kind of factor I need to put in my spirit — pizza was the one possibility.”
“Gimmick merchandise made for the press are simple. It’s approach more durable to have an concept that lasts and folks need to pattern greater than as soon as.”
The distillery touted it because the first-ever pizza-flavored whiskey, however I’ve discovered not less than one earlier instance of a pizza pechuga.
In 2015, Paul Hletko of Chicagoland’s FEW Spirits suspended a Chicago deep-dish pie in his gin nonetheless, making his personal form of pizza pechuga — maybe actually the primary ever.
“It was a gag; by no means meant to be an actual product,” he advised me. “Then we had it, and we didn’t know what to do with it.”
Finally, he offered the liquid to That Boutique-y Gin Firm, which used it in a mix.
“Gimmick merchandise made for the press are simple,” says Hletko. He’d relatively give attention to precise improvements — and issues that style good — like FEW Chilly Reduce, a bourbon proofed down with chilly brew, and Immortal Rye, proofed down with oolong tea. “It’s approach more durable to have an concept that lasts and folks need to pattern greater than as soon as,” he says.
There can be cocktails, too. Like Chilly Pizza, the drink provided at Double Rooster (one-time second-best bar on the planet), which debuted in 2022. Made with cheese- and burnt-toast-infused tequila, basil and lime cordial, honey, clarified tomato water, lime juice, and egg white, it was blended with a milk frother, then garnished with printed pizza emblem atop the froth, and, naturally, turned the go-to picture at any time when the bar was featured within the press.
However why pizza?
Admittedly, it could be the world’s most beloved chunk. It’s nice consuming meals — even higher hangover meals. Nonetheless, loads of different contenders match that invoice. The place are the cheeseburger Negronis, the taco tequilas, the fried hen whiskeys?
“[Pizza’s] flavors are easy and approachable, needing far much less manipulation than most different meals.” says Wald, who’s fast to notice he’s not infusing a spirit with pizza flavoring, however relatively utilizing the acquainted components of pizza. “Tacos, for instance, have so many layered parts that they’re a lot more durable to translate right into a drink.”
Or perhaps a taco tequila simply wouldn’t get press.
Mamma Mia!
It’s arduous to say who was the primary genius to suppose “I actually wish to get sloshed on pizza,” but it surely might need been Tom Seefurth.
In 2005, the Chicago actual property agent was homebrewing on weekends and infrequently getting into his beers into newbie competitions. That’s when he began to note one thing in regards to the winners: They at all times tasted utterly totally different from each different entrant.
At some point, whereas brewing a saison, he skipped the standard coriander and orange peel and as a substitute tossed in each single herb he had rising in his yard. Perhaps it was the oregano, however everybody swore the beer tasted like a pizza. Inadvertently, Seefurth realized he’d stumbled upon his million-dollar concept.
“After they do it only for the sake of grossing individuals out to get press, it burns my rear finish.”
Working along with his pal, Mike Rybinski, then brewmaster at Walter Payton’s Roundhouse & America’s Brewpub, Seefurth tweaked the recipe by including contemporary garlic, basil, and two kegs of canned tomatoes. It went on faucet on the brewpub in Might of 2007 and offered so briskly the native information and beer media had no alternative however to cowl it.
“This beer is a frickin’ world phenomenon,” Seefurth advised Beer Advocate on the time.
With another spherical of tweaks — reducing the ABV to make it extra crushable at pizzerias, now utilizing contemporary tomatoes — and an actual property market about to burst, Seefurth invested his closing $10,000 to get bottles of Mamma Mia! Pizza Beer in the marketplace. Some individuals liked it. Many extra hated it. However it was catnip for the burgeoning web, lampooned in early YouTube movies, joked about in Beer Advocate critiques, and ultimately name-dropped in a “Tonight Present” monologue, the place Jay Leno cracked:
“, often to get these two flavors collectively, it’s a must to wait till you vomit.”
Actually Silly
The press and notoriety for Mamma Mia! was so robust, different breweries started to leap on the bandwagon.
There was 2015’s Large Ass Cash Stout, a “actually silly” collaboration between then-firebrands Evil Twin and Norway’s Lervig Aktiebryggeri, which was brewed with frozen ham-and-pepper pizzas (and Norwegian money). The next yr, Stone Brewing provided “It’s Pizza Time!,” a Belgian-style IPA brewed with candy basil, oregano, thyme, fennel, jalapeños and pineapple — a salute to Kevin Eastman and his pizza-loving Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
However as these breweries would come to understand — and maybe already knew — was that Mamma Mia’s press was at all times going to be stronger than its gross sales. Making pizza booze isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme. It’s a get-press-quick scheme. And with out gross sales to comply with, what’s the purpose?
(Mamma Mia! misplaced its brewery contract and hasn’t been produced since 2013.)
To a sure extent, even Seefurth realized this — although he claims his motivations had been purer than these of the imitators. As he advised me again in 2018:
“After they do it only for the sake of grossing individuals out to get press, it burns my rear finish.”
You Must Wait Till…
And but, the dream of pizza alcohol hasn’t ended, although it might have shifted from cockeyed dreamers chasing consideration to large firms generally much more determined for it.
Simply final yr, Voodoo Ranger — the nation’s best-selling IPA line — teamed up with frozen pizza model Tombstone to launch IP(izza)A, made with tomato sauce, herbs and spices, and a kick of pepperoni. It offered for a jaw-dropping $49.99 a 4-pack, launched with a contest, and was touted with a splashy write-up within the New York Submit.
Later in 2024, Pizza Hut made media waves with Pizza Wine, a tomato wine infused with contemporary basil “that captures the essence of your favourite slice in each sip.” Made in partnership with Kansas-based Irvine’s Simply Past Paradise Vineyard, the limited-edition, wax-dipped launch got here bundled with Pizza Hut-branded wine glasses and a wine opener, all for the affordable worth of $60.
But once more, nobody requested for it. Nobody needed it. However the press coated it advert nauseam.
“That’s the truth of an attention-based financial system,” says Hletko. “It’s actually arduous to get Aaron Goldarb to write down about our core bourbon. However what’s an angle that you just’re going to leap onto and latch onto?”
He tells me he not too long ago acquired system approval for a Chicago-style sizzling canine pechuga.
