When Civerinos told us they'd infused their hot honey with our Woven HOMEMADE to celebrate World Pizza Day, we dropped what we were doing and went to taste it. We share a building at, so the walk was short. What we found was not.
We talk a lot about spice in whisky. Subtle. Toasted. Warming. But the moment Pete bit into the honey-drenched nduja on Civerinos New Haven-style pizza, something went off in his head that refused to be quiet.
He flipped the brief. If they can infuse hot honey with whisky, what happens if we blend a whisky around the hot honey instead?
PETE'S LITTLE SECRET
Whisky, honey and spice is nothing new. It might even be close to how whisky was drunk in the Highlands before it became a commodity. But the spices in whisky liqueurs are Victorian heirlooms: Cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg. The luxuries of their day. Ours borrows from a different culture entirely: the global hot honey craze, wired up with the local disruptor energy of our Browns of Leith stablemates; Civs.
So Pete went to the lab. For a month he worked through chillis, extraction methods and honey ratios, mostly on his own, telling nobody. The base is a blended Scotch built around North British, our local grain distillery. The honey is Scottish blossom. The heat is the hard part. Chilli works beautifully with whisky, but we wanted a heat that added a layer rather than took over. Something that stands up in a drink without burning your face off. After a lot of palate shredding R&D Pete emerged with a recipe (and a pretty impressive heat tollerance) - the tincture is made with overproof whisky - fresh and dried jalapeños, habanero, chipotle, scotch bonnet. Don't be scared. It's delicious.
Then one afternoon he appeared, grinning, clutching what looked like an ordinary whisky sour. "Taste this."
That was it.
DON'T BE MAD!
Here's the honest bit. Adding anything to whisky raises eyebrows, and for some people flavoured whisky is an instant no. We get it. Most of it is done badly. But we think in experiences, in the thing you actually end up drinking, and we apply the same care here as we do to everything else we make. Done with the right intent, we reckon anything can be good.
THE RULES ARE RUBBISH
We could have called it a liqueur. To do that legally we'd need 100g of sugar per litre, which with real honey is a huge amount, and everything we tried at that level tasted far too sweet. Those rules come from a time when more sugar meant more luxury. We settled on about half. The honey still brings a whole layer of flavour, but the drink stays balanced. That lands us in a category simply called spirit drink. Not whisky. Just very good.
We've known Michele, Civerinos founder, for over twenty years, back to our days behind bars (the drinking kind). He's proven you can be deadly serious about quality and still leave room to play. That's the real point. Whisky can respond to the culture it finds itself in. In Leith, that culture is collaborative. If Scotch won't join the conversation, it risks getting left out of it.
This is what happens when it does.