I Tried The New Doritos-Flavored Liquor In 3 Different Cocktails

There are certain foods that will always remind me of childhood. Back in the days when my snack access was limited to my parents’ grocery list, I was an avid consumer of anything cheesy and salty I could get my hands on. If I got lucky, that was a bag of Doritos (Team Cool Ranch), and the dust would inevitably end up all over my clothing, my homework, and at least one of the family dogs.

Personal childhood woes aside, Doritos are nostalgic for me. It’s a taste I could recognize anywhere — or at least that’s what I assumed until this week, when I got invited to try the new Doritos-flavored distilled spirit, which launched on Dec. 12 in collaboration with Empirical. Yes, you read that correctly: There’s a new alcoholic drink on the market that is made using real Doritos chips.

Per Empirical (the spirits brand that worked with Doritos on this limited-release creation), the liquor was developed using a vacuum distillation process to preserve the essence of the chip. The result is meant to taste like Nacho Cheese Doritos, but also like something you could mix into a cocktail and sip along with dinner.

It’s a wacky concept — and according to the folks behind it, that’s exactly the point. “Doritos is always looking for ways to disrupt culture and surprise our fans with new and unexpected innovations,” Courtney Larson, head of marketing at Doritos, tells Elite Daily in a statement. “In our talks with Empirical, it was clear they would be the perfect partner to take on our iconic Nacho Cheese flavor and create an incredible, completely unique spirit with it. Fans can expect a nacho cheese-imbued beverage experience that smells and tastes just like the real thing.”

In the spirit of journalism, I obviously had to try it. On Dec. 13, I attended a launch event at Superbueno in New York City’s East Village, where we tasted the spirit neat and sampled three different cocktails invented by the restaurant’s bartenders. There was also a collection of savory snacks on hand made using Doritos.

It Tastes Like The Real Thing

Even though this spirit was made using actual Doritos, I couldn’t wrap my mind around how it could possibly taste like the chip. And yet! The clear liquor (which comes in a very cool Doritos x Empirical branded bottle, BTW) actually does taste like Doritos, in a good way. It’s very corn-chip forward, with a hint of the nacho cheese flavor — but it doesn’t taste like you’re drinking liquid cheese dust, which is what I was initially worried about when I heard this was a thing.

There are plenty of corn-based spirits on the market already — including many types of whiskey and gin — so it actually makes sense to use this as a base flavor. If you didn’t know you were trying a Doritos-flavored liquor, you’d taste it and think, “Hm, that’s interesting but I can’t put my finger on it.” But once you know what’s in it, you can tell immediately what the flavor is.

Yes, You Can Make Cocktails With It

After tasting it, my immediate follow-up question was: What can you make with this? I’d never choose to drink liquor neat, so I needed to know how to turn the Doritos liquor into something cute and fun for a dinner party. (We’re girls! We’re going to order drinks based on the aesthetic.)

At the event, we tasted three different cocktails — a milk punch, an old fashioned, and a margarita — all made using this spirit as the base. It was impressive to see the variety of ingredients you could pair with it and how different the flavor notes were in each one. While I could taste a hint of the spirit in each cocktail, it was much less distinctive than when I tried it alone, and I probably wouldn’t have been able to pick out the Doritos flavor mixed into the drinks.

My personal favorite pick was the margarita, which had a spicy kick and some salt on the rim. It would pair perfectly with a plate of nachos (which you could also make using Doritos if you really wanted to lean into the theme here).

Pre-orders for the bottle are currently sold out on the Empirical website, but the Empirical team tells Elite Daily to look out for it in stores in New York and California starting in January — and stay tuned for more potential rollout details.