If your brunch order comes with a bottle of hot sauce on the side, a new launch in the UAE is worth knowing about. Absolut and Tabasco have teamed up on a spicy vodka, and it has just landed in bars, restaurants and shops across the Emirates and the wider Middle East.
The drink, called Absolut TABASCO, sits at 38% ABV. It starts as regular Absolut, then gets infused with a natural essence taken from the same fermented, oak-aged red pepper mash that goes into the famous sauce. There's no added sugar, and the flavour profile is what you'd hope for: that familiar sharp Tabasco tang up front, followed by a slow-building warmth. It's less a gimmick and more a genuine hybrid of two very old recipes.
And those histories are part of the story. Tabasco has been made on Avery Island, Louisiana since 1868, with its pepper mash aged in oak barrels for up to three years before bottling. Absolut has been produced in the small Swedish town of Ahus since the 1870s, built on winter wheat, water from a local deep well and the brand's own yeast strain. The bottle nods to both sides: Absolut's classic apothecary shape, dressed up in Tabasco's red and green with the diamond logo.
So how do you drink it? The headline serve is a Spicy Bloody Mary - the vodka with tomato juice, lemon, Worcestershire sauce and spices, finished with a Cajun-spice rim. If tomato juice is not your thing, the simpler Spicy Lemonade is an easy way to add heat to a lazy brunch or a sundowner. Both are exactly the kind of drinks that suit a Dubai poolside afternoon or a long weekend brunch, which is presumably the point.
You can find the bottle at selected venues across the UAE, at MMI liquor stores and at Dubai duty-free, so it works whether you're a resident experimenting at home or a visitor wanting to try it out at a bar before flying home with a bottle.
Why should a traveller care? Because Dubai brunch is practically a competitive sport, and a vodka built for Bloody Marys slots straight into that scene. It's a fun, low-stakes reason to check out a new venue, and a genuinely local-ish souvenir - the Middle East is among the first markets to get it. Ask for a Spicy Bloody Mary at a brunch spot, and if you like it, grab a bottle at duty-free on the way home.
For the brands, this is a clever crossover: two icons with more than a century of history each, aimed squarely at the crowd that adds chilli to everything. For everyone else, it's simply a new excuse to order a Bloody Mary - as if one was ever needed.
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