Is Pizza Hut Wine Great or Gross?

At some point in the last few decades, we as a species crossed the Rubicon and decided we wanted to know which wines pair best with our favorite fast-food joints, and there was no shortage of experts, bloggers, and even a few bloggers who happened to be experts to weigh in with their opinions. Having a Whopper? Enjoy a Grenache, or perhaps a Sangiovese. Chicken McNuggets? A fruity, acidic rosé is your go-to. And so on. It’s fun. And occasionally tasty — I have enjoyed a Popeye’s chicken sandwich with caviar and a Brut champagne. But do you ever wonder which wines the fast-food joints themselves would recommend to pair with their, um, cuisine? Me neither. But Pizza Hut has taken the gambit one step further and actually commissioned its own branded wine. And it’s… well, it’s definitely not what you’d expect.

Where is Pizza Hut Wine Made?

Pizza Hut didn’t go to Italy to source its aptly named Pizza Hut Wine. Rather, they went to Lawrence, Kansas, home of Irvine’s Just Beyond Paradise winery. Now, I’m no wine expert, so maybe Kansas is a new hotspot for oenophiles, but I certainly had no clue the Sunflower State engaged in such endeavors. Give credit where credit is due to Ed and Cindy Irvine, along with their son Ed Jr. and his friend Scott Schlageck, who took their combined viticultural knowledge and, in 2017, bought 40 acres of land in the Kaw River Valley and began construction on Just Beyond Paradise. A Covid-marred opening in the spring of 2020 was followed by an official grand opening celebration in June, 2021. Today they have close to two dozen wines available, ranging in price from $12-30 and available for shipping to “most states,” in their words.

What is Tomato Wine?

So why did Pizza Hut choose this particular winery to represent the brand? Turns out Irvine’s doesn’t just make wine from grapes. They also make apple wine, pear wine, even mead. And they also make — wait for it — wine from tomatoes, which are after all a fruit, not a vegetable.

Tomato wine is a thing, if not an exceedingly popular thing, with a handful of commercial tomato winemakers scattered throughout the US. What makes Irvine’s stand out from the rest? To quote their website, “In June 2023, the winery expanded their offerings further by launching an on-site winery kitchen featuring brick oven Neapolitan-style pizzas to pair perfectly with their wines.” Pizza, tomato wine… can you just see the light bulbs going on in Pizza Hut marketing execs’ heads? Read more about tomato wine.

Do New Yorkers Secretly Love Pizza Hut?

I’m from New York City, so it’s not like I eat Pizza Hut or any of the other national chains with any regularity. But I have a theory that even the most vociferous New York pizza snobs have a secret affinity for at least one suburban, flyover-country chain. Why else would Domino’s be so prevalent in the five boroughs? It’s not like tourists come looking for anything but authentic Noo Yawk slices, so it must be the natives who are scarfing it down. Though Domino’s is the most visible of the chains, plenty of its siblings have inexplicably established a footprint in NYC, from Papa John’s to Uno’s to Little Caesars. My personal exception to the New-York-slice rule is, in fact, Pizza Hut. I had it sometime during my formative years in the ‘70s or ‘80s, loved its thick, chewy crust and sweetly tangy sauce, and then… never had it again. It’s been at least 20 years since I chowed down at the Hut. I think part of it was shame, to be honest. And there aren’t many Pizza Huts in the city limits — you have to search it out. And why do that when I could get the real New York deal right around the corner?

How to Taste Pizza Hut Wine

Pizza Hut wine cork — Pizza Hut tomato wine

But with a bottle of Pizza Hut Pizza Wine in hand, graciously provided by the Hut’s publicity firm, I had no choice but to pair it with Pizza Hut cuisine if I were to evaluate it properly. I won’t lie, I was a little giddy about ordering it, and my slice-snob teenage daughter (who despises Domino’s but enjoyed Papa John’s the one time she tried it) got in on the action as well, ordering a Personal Pan Pizza with pepperoni even though she wasn’t going to try the wine.

My wife and my best friend were also on hand to sample both the cuisine and the wine. We ordered a 12-inch Meat Lover’s pie with Original Pan Pizza crust — because I was NOT about to get their Chicago (and Wisconsin)-style tavern pie or, heaven forbid, their “Big New Yorker” pizza — along with Chicken Alfredo pasta, and five breadsticks, just to cover all the culinary bases. As for the wine… it was in fact Irvine’s tomato wine, rejiggered to create, in the words of the label on the bottle itself, “the ultimate fusion of pizza and wine.” The limited edition bottling is made from, to quote the label again, “ripe juicy tomatoes … infused with natural basil, oregano, and garlic flavors, capturing the essence of your favorite slice in every sip.”

Irvine’s and Pizza Hut are far from the first folks to attempt an alcoholic beverage that tastes like food. In 2023, for example, Empirical Spirits made a splash with their Doritos-flavored spirit, which was beloved by some, despised by many, and talked about by all. Read Tony’s review of Empirical X Doritos Nacho Cheese Spirit. So while we had our doubts, we approached the wine with open minds and palates. We uncorked it and let it breathe for 10-15 minutes while we waited for our order to show up. When we poured it, as we unpacked the food (which was not cheap, by the way — ordering from our local pizzeria would have cost significantly less), the color was, as my bestie noted, the exact shade of raspberry ginger ale. Which seems to have been done on purpose, since the label notes that vegetable juice is added for color.

How Does It Taste?

On the nose, Pizza Hut pizza wine has a distinct aroma of pizza crust dusted with oregano — buttery, bready, herbal. On the palate, it tastes like tomato water with a ton of oregano and hints of basil and garlic. It paired best with the pasta — the acidity of the tomato cut through the creamy Alfredo sauce. But… well, how can I put this. Perhaps my wife summed it up best: “Disgusting.” My bestie, when asked for a one-word review, cheated a little bit: “Neveragain.” But I’ll let it slide. Because there’s really no getting around it — this stuff is not only not good but actively terrible. You can’t distill the essence of pizza into a sip of wine because a big part of that essence is the texture: the soft, chewy crust (in the case of Pizza Hut, at least); the gooey, slightly stretchy cheese; even the feel of grease on the lips. Simply recreating that flavor in a glass of wine, with a rather thin, pallid mouthfeel no less, just doesn’t cut it. And that’s without even criticizing the excessive amounts of oregano in this stuff. Not that it would have been much better had the pizza spices been better balanced, but that’s just rubbing salt in the gastronomic wound. Or rubbing oregano, I suppose.

Should You Try It?

In the end, I would rather drink Pizza Hut wine than put a Meat Lover’s slice into a blender and drink that, but if that’s not damning with faint praise, I don’t know what is. The silver lining to this dark cloud is that I finally had an excuse to try Pizza Hut again, and I won’t lie, I enjoyed it. Will I ever eat it again? Should circumstances necessitate it, absolutely. Will I go out of my way to do so? Not as long as I’m in the five boroughs. As for the wine, it sold out the day of release, so even if you want to try it, you may have to search the secondary market and pay more than the $25 (for a 375ml bottle) the Hut was asking for it. But if, even after my warnings, you can’t resist, go to Irvine Winery’s website and put your name on a list, as they’re threatening — er, hinting — that they’ll make more. I’m actually intrigued by their unadulterated, non-Pizza Hut-ified tomato wine, to say nothing of their mead. I can’t vouch for any of it, not yet at least, but I think I can absolve them of blame, most of it at least, for Pizza Hut’s wine and put it squarely where it belongs, on Pizza Hut itself. Shame on you, corporate execs.