Tabasco Wins Lawsuit Against Look-A-Like ‘Halapeño Pepper’ Vodka

(Photo: Stoli Group)

Spirits giant Stoli Group has redesigned its Halapeño Pepper Vodka with a new bottle and label following a lawsuit from the McIlhenny Company, owner of Tabasco Hot Sauce.

The packaging changes are reportedly part of a settlement agreement between the two companies, according to a statement seen by Global Drinks Intel.

The heated legal battle kicked off earlier this year, when Stoli released its Halapeño Pepper flavor extension weeks before an official collaboration between Absolut Vodka and Tabasco was revealed to the public.

Lawyers believed that it wasn’t mere coincidence. The McIlhenny Company filed a trademark complaint against Stoli Group USA, alleging that the latter’s recently launched vodka flavor was “confusingly similar” to the Tabasco trade dress. The complaint alleged that Stoli Group approached McIlhenny in 2024 for a potential co-branded pepper sauce vodka. The deal reportedly fell through in a matter of months, and by December 2025, Stoli debuted its own spicy vodka with nonspecific hot sauce branding.

(Photo: The McIlhenny Company)

McIlhenny argued that it wasn’t nonspecific enough. The hot sauce maker’s lawyers pointed out several similarities between Stoli’s Tabasco mockups and its finalized Halapeño packaging, taking issue with the bottle shape, color scheme, green neck label, red cap and broken concentric circle design on the front. Barring the omission of the Tabasco name and logo, the company said that the design “remains otherwise essentially the same.”

“In other words, when told ‘no’ by McIlhenny, Defendants took the Tabasco Trade Dress and, without authorization, used it to create the Infringing Trade Dress to market and drive the sales of the Defendants’ Product in a manner likely to cause confusion among consumers about the source,” the filing read.

The post-lawsuit redesign remedies most of the similarities noted in the complaint. Stoli has replaced the red cap with a gold cap, reimagined the neck label and removed the concentric circle design. The recipe contained within remains the same, and the rebooted product is available at liquor stores across the country for around $20.

Funnily enough, the new bottle still includes the text “Louisiana Character” underneath an image of a green alligator eating a barrel. You’d be forgiven for thinking that phrase refers to Tabasco — which has famously produced and barrel-aged its hot sauce in Louisiana since 1868 — and not Stoli Group, a New York City-based subsidiary of a Luxembourg-headquartered conglomerate. The verbiage, however, refers to the Stoli Group-owned Louisiana Spirits facility where the vodka is distilled.

In January, Stoli Group USA announced it was converting from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7 bankruptcy in a bid to liquidate its assets. The company said that its Louisiana Spirits business, which also produces Bayou Rum, will remain unaffected.