Drinks start-up launches ‘world’s first’ peated tomato juice

A former Beam-Suntory marketer in Scotland has created what she claims is the world’s first tomato juice smoked using peat from the island of Islay.

Called Tongue in Peat, the mixer is designed to add a whisky twist to the classic Bloody Mary.

The new mixer was created by The Start Up Drinks Lab in Port Glasgow, headed up by Hannah Fisher.

Fisher had worked in the drinks industry for over a decade in marketing, branding and innovation roles, including as global marketing manager for Beam Suntory’s single malt whisky portfolio, and as innovation manager at Tennents Brewery. She left Beam Suntory in 2017 to start her own venture, and launched her own innovation lab with co-founder Craig Strachan.

The Start Up Drinks Lab is a contract bottler that helps brands develop new ideas, be they soft drinks, RTDs, beer or spirits.

She made the smokey tomato juice by exposing fresh tomatoes to peat smoke for 12 hours in a traditional smokery. The tomatoes are then hand-blended at Fisher’s lab, before further infusing and bottling. The hands-on process means her team can create 5,000 bottles of the juice per batch.

While there are already a handful of smoked tomato juices on the market, Fisher claims to have created the only one that is smoked with peat sourced from Islay.

“I’ve always loved the influence of peat smoke in single malt whisky and being a huge fan of Bloody Mary’s, I have been looking for ways to combine the two. After several bartenders heard what I was doing, they asked me to make batches for their bars and it went from there.”

“After lots of experiments at home to find the right length of smoke time and the best region of peat to use, we finally landed on the recipe for Tongue in Peat that delivered the smoky, flavoursome punch we were looking for. Each batch tastes slightly different as we only use tomatoes which are in season so we label each of our batches to help our drinkers spot the subtle variations per batch.”

The juice is available to buy online, priced at £2.45 for a 250ml bottle, and £4.79 for a 500ml bottle.