Sippin’ and stogies: Local craft soda expanding beyond cigar world

[JohnS]

Sippin’ and stogies: Local craft soda expanding beyond cigar world

Developed by an Albany man, Abbina soda was created to pair with cigars but goes well with food and in a cocktail

By Steve Barnes, Senior Writer - July 1, 2025

Charlie Albanetti, creator of Abbina Craft Sipping Soda, during a tasting night of the soda at The Welton Room, a cigar lounge, on June 20 in Colonie. The soda was created specifically to accompany cigars. (Jim Franco/Times Union)

After Charlie Albanetti was able to legally buy cigars at age 18, three years before he could purchase alcoholic beverages often associated with smoking them, he'd get soda from a chain drive-through and light up while in the car.

"The combination of sweetness, carbonation and cold soothed my mouth," said Albanetti, an Albany resident who developed and sells what is believed to be the nation's first soda designed to be consumed with cigars - though he's quick to add that it's well-suited to pair with food, too.

One of his four flavors of Abbina Craft Sipping Soda, available for now at cigar lounges locally and nationwide, tastes of candied cherry atop earthy notes of beet and oakmoss; another has saffron and patchouli, brightened by grapefruit. The most eccentric, named after his first dog, Vinnie, evokes Jamaican jerk seasoning, redolent with allspice and ginger. The most conventional, full of coffee and chocolate, is perfect for dessert - or, Albanetti suggests, breakfast with a cinnamon bun. All have less sugar than conventional soda, and lower carbonation allows the flavors to linger longer on the palate.

The path to creating Abbina - the Italian word for matching or pairing - started about 10 years ago, when Albanetti began to delve into quality cigars. The first step, however improbably, was an effort to duplicate an evocative smell from childhood, the cologne of a great-uncle. Sidelined by a severe bout of diverticulitis that required surgery and six months of a bland diet, he diverted his attention to the world of fragrance, buying ingredients online and mixing them at home to try to approximate that long-ago cologne.

"Everyone who could have told me what it was had died, so I just started experimenting, and the whole world of fragrances opened up to me," Albanetti said, acknowledging, "When I pick up a new hobby, I get into it very intensively." (A similar passion for progressive politics led to his prior career - 17 years with the advocacy nonprofit Citizen Action of New York, rising from unpaid intern to to deputy executive director.)

With fragrance as a background, Albanetti made a connection that seems not to have been obvious to anyone else, at least on a commercial level. As he tells it: "One day, I'm sitting in my basement, contemplating my life and thinking about my career, and it occurred to me that mainstream soda is not very interesting - it's a lot of corn syrup and very little real flavor. It's just functional. I wanted to try to make a beverage for myself that is more interesting."

He worked solo at first but, believing he was on to something marketable, hired a professional flavorist in fall 2022 to hone recipes. The first finished product, manufactured at a small soda company in Connecticut, arrived in December 2023, and, thanks to presale interest via word of mouth and online promotion, by the end of that month about 100 customers had bought 12-packs of Abbina. Albanetti said the manufacturer now produces 500-gallon batches of each of his flavors about four times a year.

Abbina is currently available in about 40 locations, from New York to Texas and Oregon. Most are cigar shops, including, in the Capital Region, The Welton Room in Loudonville, Habana Premium Cigar Shoppe in Colonie, Castle Cigars in Rotterdam and Park Lane Tobacconist in Clifton Park. The suggested retail price is $4.79 a bottle; a 12-pack ordered online and shipped from Abbina's Albany warehouse costs $45.48, plus $12 for delivery.

Adding new retailers isn't difficult, provided Albanetti can get the owner's attention.

"Once I have a meeting, it's not a hard sell," he said.

Such was the case with The Welton Room, located in a small commercial plaza on Albany-Shaker Road. Open since earlier this year and built over 18 months by Rob Welton, a contractor by trade, the lounge is sleek and dark, with Chesterfield sofas, a humidor room with 207 types of cigars, priced from about $7 to $60 apiece, and, prior to the arrival of Abbina, beverages limited to little more than water and mainstream soda. (New York law precludes most cigar lounges from selling alcohol.)

"It's nothing I'd ever heard of - because it didn't exist until he invented it," said Welton. "Once we sat down to do a tasting, it was an easy decision."

But cigar smokers, though devoted to their hobby, are a tiny audience; about 3.5% of Americans regularly smoke cigars, according to federal statistics.

With an eye toward expanding into beverage centers and specialty food stores, Albanetti said he is removing cigar language on Abbina labels starting within a month or so, when the next batches are made.

"If I want to get into bigger wholesalers, I don't think they'd even be willing to have the discussion if it's so closely identified with cigars," he said.

Similarly, on the Abbina website and the company's fliers, pairing suggestions for each flavor start with food, continuing to cigars and cocktail recipes. For example, Abbina's Candlewood soda, with cherry, beet and oakmoss, is recommended to pair with tomato sauce and red meat, Honduran or Costa Rican Cigars, and served like a spritzer over ice with equal parts soda and merlot. Vinnie goes well with barbecue and lightly smoky scotch, Albanetti said, and the refreshing saffron-patchouli-grapefruit Tower 44 complements seafood, Cuban cigars and gin with a fruit liqueur.

Now, after a year and a half of selling craft soda, Abbina "is almost at the break-even point," according to Albanetti. A recent visit to a big cigar trade show helped him add distributors, and he believes getting into stores without a cigar association should turn the enterprise profitable enough to make a living.

His wife, Liz, has been "incredibly supportive," he said, adding, "She also knows that when I get into something, there's very little hope of convincing me otherwise."

Source: https://www.timesunion.com/food/article/abbina-soda-cigar-albany-20393160.php