Soup manufacturer Campbells has defended its latest range of soup infused cocktail recipes saying that its ‘brothtails’ make soup aspirational as well as adding a nutritious warming element to the bar experience.
Bones
‘Since our day job is boiling up animal bones and vegetable peelings there might seem no obvious overlap with the world of quality cocktails,’ said head of marketing Tess Peration.
‘But in fact, provided you’re happy to defy logic and common sense that’s not the case at all.’
The discovery that it was possible to add soup to cocktails and suggest in all seriousness that people make them was, they said ‘as ground-breaking as it is stomach-churning’.
Recommended brothtails recipes include a chicken broth negroni, a pho mango sour, and a mushroom daiquiri.
‘Really, when you think about it, it’s amazing that nobody has done this before,’ said Ms Peration.
Eco-friendly
As well as pushing the boundaries of decency, Campbells is keen to emphasise the promotion’s eco credentials.
‘If you have a teaspoon or two of left-over soup, you don’t have to throw it away, which is bad for the planet and kills dolphins,’ said Peration. ‘Now you can use it in a positive way by bringing something really different to your favourite cocktails.
‘Specifically undrinkability.’
It was, she said ‘an initiative that would make everything greener. Particularly anyone who tries the recipes’.
Healthy
Health bodies have given the new brothtails a cautious welcome, saying they provided a useful way of ‘lining your stomach as you drink – provided you can keep them down’.
They were also, they said ‘likely to turn a lot of people off drinking alcohol ever again.’
The WHO’s Dr Pan Creatitis said that the taste car crash of trying a negroni with chicken broth ice cubes alone was ‘likely to be a more effective deterrent than millions of pounds of serious health advertising.’
Trendy
Other food manufacturers are set to jump on the brothtails trend, with McDonalds looking at a burger-inflected Negroni, called the Mac-aroni.
McCain, meanwhile, are working on a carbohydrate-saturated version of the classic gin, lemon juice and champagne cocktail called a French Seventy-Fries.
In the Douro, port house Funseeker is looking to revive ancient forgotten barrels by adding tomato soup. Their Mulliga-tawny is being marketed as ‘spicy, complex and great chilled or at room temperature’.
Critics have called the growth of soup-infused drinks a ‘race to the bouillon’.
Black-listed
Star bartender Mick Sology said there was ‘no way’ that anyone should try making the drinks without having access to a full hazmat suit and emergency adrenaline administration system.
‘These kind of desperate marketing stunts should stay firmly where they belong – on company websites and the trade press news pages,’ he told Fake Booze. ‘We have to accept that some products just don’t belong in cocktails.’
Soup, he said, could now be added to the black list of ‘Baileys, parasols and anything involving flavoured gin.’
Read here about how Barefoot’s Oreo-Thins blend caused a palate holocaust, and here to read about the world’s first Tunnocks-flavoured whisky
