Goose and Ben & Jerry’s have announced the arrival of Madhuvanilla, the latest in a long line of musician-inspired flavors by the Burlington, VT-based ice cream company. Pints of Ben & Jerry’s x Goose’s Madhuvanilla will be on sale at major grocery retailers around North America this summer following its official launch at Goose’s upcoming festival in Mexico, Viva El Gonzo.
The new flavor, which takes its name from longtime Goose live staple “Madhuvan”, is described on the Ben & Jerry’s website as “tasty, easy-to-consume vanilla ice cream that makes people mad for some reason.”
The connection between Ben & Jerry’s and the music community began by chance in the late ’80s when Jane Williamson, a Grateful Dead fan living in Maine, posted a suggestion on the bulletin board at her local Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shop and subsequently followed up with a postcard to the company’s Burlington, VT headquarters reading, “We’re great fans of the Grateful Dead and we’re great fans of your ice cream. Why don’t you make a cherry flavor and call it Cherry Garcia? You know it will sell because Dead paraphernalia always sells. We are talking good business sense here, plus it will be a real hoot for the fans.”
The flavor she suggested was soon launched, and has been among the company’s most popular ever since. It also helped pave the way for a series a of artist-oriented ice cream flavors from Ben & Jerry’s including another top seller, “Phish Food,” and limited-time flavors tied to Bob Marley, Dave Matthews Band, and many more. For many musicians—like Brandi Carlile—getting a Ben & Jerry’s flavor is a major career goal.
Related: Brandi Carlile Wants Her Own Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Flavor Called “Candy Bar-lile” [Video]
According to a press release, the Connecticut-native band settled on “Madhuvanilla” out of several potential flavor options purely based on how good the ice cream tasted. After sampling three contenders—including a “Pancakes”-inspired flavor featuring sweet cream ice cream and a maple drizzle and a “Snacktory Chip-tion” flavor featuring potato chips and popcorn crumbles—the band members decided they liked Madhuvanilla best.
As Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield explained in a press release, “I’m proud of Goose for putting aside preconceived notions and outside opinions about flavors and just going with what tasted good to them. I was initially a little confused about the description they came up with for the flavor—it’s vanilla ice cream, what’s there to be mad about?—but then I saw the comment section…”
Within minutes of the Madhuvanilla announcement, the comment sections of Ben & Jerry’s announcement posts were flooded with snarky jam band fans bashing Goose’s flavor choice. Even Rocco Primovera of Primovera Tours, the San José del Cabo tourism company hosting the Ben & Jerry’s Madhuvanilla launch event during Goose’s upcoming festival, was not immune to the apparent outrage over the flavor: while he has received predominantly positive feedback about the event, he also gets a persistent and consistent stream of callers telling him that Madhuvanilla is, in short, too vanilla.
“Here at Primovera Tours,” he added, “we like to remind our guests, if you’re a miserable prick typing comments on the internet at home, you’re still gonna be a miserable prick in Cabo, okay? You understand? You know what I’m saying? If you think Madhuvanilla is generic in the U.S., you’re still gonna think it tastes like that on a beautiful estuary nestled between the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortez.”
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“Ice cream is a vast creative medium,” Jerry Greenfield added in the press release. “There are infinite ways to make it, and most of them are pretty darn good. You can like one, or like a bunch, or like some more than others, and that’s totally cool. It’s all ice cream. It’s all making people happy.”
“I always think it’s funny when fans of one flavor drag another flavor for being too plain—or even for being too similar to the one they like,” he continued. “I mean, why hate on vanilla just because it’s sort of like cookie dough? You like cookie dough. Maybe you feel like vanilla is just cookie dough without some of the ingredients that excite you most, and that’s okay. You can choose cookie dough. But why spend the energy talking trash about vanilla? It’s ice cream. Let people enjoy it. At least it’s not broccoli.”
When asked if his statement was a larger metaphor for jam band fans’ tendency to denigrate groups sounding too much like something else they like, Jerry responded, “What? No, man. I’m just talking about ice cream. You jam band guys are intense.”
April fools!