Grapes Of Wrath Hot Sauce Review

High River Sauces Grapes Of Wrath

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxaU1vObTmI

UPDATE 09.16.23: Usually, I don't make these notations when a review changes after filming (I just filmed the support video for this, which will be live in November), but this one is old enough and has enough changing throughout that I thought it bears noting that the previous review of this sauce was notably different, a given, I suppose, since this review is well over 10 years old at this point. Obviously much can change in that time and it's always interesting going back and reading some of the posts closer to the beginning of the blog.

I almost don't know where to start with this one...if ever there was a "kitchen sink" or, as I like to call them, "garbage pail" sauce, this is it. Granted, the Orange Krush sauce (reviewed elsewhere in this blog) has a pile of ingredients, but I think this sauce probably tops that one handily. With that many ingredients, it becomes very difficult to isolate one particular ingredient when tasted solo, but if using this sauce on various foods, there comes a certain cancellation effect and different elements will be pulled forward. I forget which dish exactly it was, but I tried this on one of the more exotic experiments my wife made and the sauce was transformed into basically salty and somewhat spicy berries and that was it. The dominant flavor of the sauce solo, which is the pumpkin pie spice, was negated entirely.

Like Tears Of The Sun, this is one that came about as a direct result of nominations for the upcoming (sometime) Scott Roberts Hot Sauce Tourney and like that one, I have sort of hedged thoughts about it. I appreciate the novelty of it, but I get the impression this was designed around one particular time of the year and wasn't really intended too much outside of that. That time, of course, would be Thanksgiving and the "Limited Edition" moniker on the label and the suggestion of applying it to turkey or goose bolsters that. [This sauce has never, to my knowledge, been unavailable in the 10+ years since I originally wrote this - DW]

Unlike the Tears, in which everything is held together in that thick, sticky gluey liquid, the heavier elements here will drift down and if you don't shake it well, you will get a thin runny watery sort of salty, vaguely winey grape juice with superhot elements. Once the heavier elements are incorporated, it comes out as chunks of berries and cabbage combined with the thin runny grape water sauce. I didn't mind this part, but frequently had mounds of hot berry debris and various bits of the sauce elsewhere. This does complicate usage somewhat. It reminds me a lot of if someone decided to play a prank on Grandpa and sneak hot chilis into his berry compote or into Aunt Edna's homemade cranberry sauce.

The real issue here is the taste. Like many of you out there, my wife is a Netflix subscriber and frequently we will watch a movie and say that it is the definition of a "2.5 star" movie, a rating that does not currently exist. Here, this sauce solo is an example of the definite of a 2.5 star sauce, or a 5, using my rating system. It's ok, unique, unlike anything else, but of a flavor I found frequently difficult to use, aside from roasted fowl (turkey, goose, chicken and I'd bet duck), where it is tremendous and roast pork, where it is less tremendous but still not too shabby. One every other thing I had, it either didn't work well or was an outright distraction.

This comes on with a minor blast of initial heat that levels of quickly and keeps at a fairly low level, though given the Habaneros and Scorpions, there is somewhat of a low build. It dissipates nearly entirely almost immediately after finishing, which I found somewhat of a neat trick. It is probably enough, though, that this is a sauce better reserved for chileheads, as I don't see normies admiring the flavor combination in conjunction with the notable heat too enjoyable. 

Bottom line: This is another more occasional use sauce. Though it is good in the very narrow and specific applications where it works (and works well), it's hard to see keeping a bottle of sauce around for roasted bird that I rarely have and it  significantly reduced my enjoyment of some of the other foods I used it on. I really do admire the spirit of adventurism here, though, and thought it was well worth it to try a bottle.

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 3
       Flavor: 7
       Flexibility: 3
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 5

Seven Moons Pineapple Chili + Mango Chili Sauce Reviews

Seven Moons Pineapple Chili Sauce
Seven Moons Mango Chili Sauce

This is a sort of rare review that I won't typically be doing, but in this case, we have dual Big Lots specials and neither sauce is particularly worthy of its own separate review nor would such a thing be necessary.

In my quest to try to find this damnable sauce that I loved the shit out of but can't remember the name of, a sauce I mentioned recently in my review of the dreadful Mae Ploy Chili-Garlic shitstuff, I picked up the Pineapple Chili. Yes, a long shot and yes, I was buying based nearly solely on an approximation of color and I saw the Mango next to it and thought that had potential. I think I spent 3 or 4 bucks for both, which are 6.4 oz. each.

I'm not quite sure whether to call them substandard or mediocre, but the first problem I had was initially upon opening them. They had the little plastic rings that you use to pull the center out of the cap and both of them broke. The Mango came closest to opening, but I had to get a knife and try to dig them out without mangling the entire cap too much so I could still seal it. Very shoddy work there.

The Pineapple was the bottle I got to first and consequently spent the most time with. The texture is fantastic, thick and gloppy and does a great job of sticking to food. The flavor definitely tastes of pineapple, but the peppers are largely absent and this reminded me greatly of that cheap red "sweet and sour" sauce they have at the mall Chinese restaurants that is all fake-tasting sweet and no sour at all to speak of. It is not a bad-tasting sauce, just hyper-hyper sweet and not really enjoyably so.

The Mango has a lot more of the sour, as if they did not use particularly ripe fruit. Again with the thick and gloppy sauce and this time, more pieces of fruit. The Mango again very present, the chilis not at all. This one tastes somehow even more fake than the pineapple and has an aspect to it I can only describe as "queer." It is not a horrible-tasting sauce but it's oddness is a huge distraction.

Bottom line: I didn't come close to finishing either of them. The Pineapple I made it about halfway through and the Mango I cleared the neck of the bottle and that was it. Both of them are in the trash, ahead of a scheduled spring cleaning in a couple weeks, though I tend to keep the sauces down to 1/2 of a door shelf section (and some in the back where the baby can't reach, if they're something he would find uncomfortably hot). Again, not upset about the gamble and it's still worth the risk to try and find a hidden gem. I missed horribly this time out, though, with both of these.

Breakdown (Pineapple):

    Heat level: 0
    Flavor: 3
    Flexibility: 3
    Enjoyment to dollar factor: 1

Overall: 2

Breakdown (Mango):

    Heat level: 0
    Flavor: 1
    Flexibility: 2
    Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 1

Tears Of The Sun Hot Sauce Review

High River Sauces Tears Of The Sun Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhbxtuPzsS8

This is one of the High River sauces that got a pile of nominations for the upcoming Hot Sauce Tourney that Scott Roberts is going to be doing in the near future and with that many nods, even though I think a lot of them, like some of the other sauces, were perhaps staged slightly, I've also heard the accolades about this sauce mentioned elsewhere and have been interested since I first read about Chris Caffery finally getting his sauce to market. Honestly, I dismissed it like I did Dave Mustaine's coffee blend, i.e. as a vanity project, but given that Caffery's name appears nowhere on the bottle, I have re-considered my earlier wrong judgment.

That aside, on to the sauce itself. It was with no small excitement that I cracked open the bottle. As you can tell from reading my reviews, I'm not a huge fan of sauce "nose." If there is one food where smells with often have little to no bearing on the taste, it is in this arena. Frequently, I'll experience adding the sauce to a type of food where the spices in the food will cancel out and negate parts of the sauce. Sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes less so. Point being, sauce is never the main part of anything, it is always an additive. Thus, something that doesn't dazzle me with aroma is not indicative of whether or not I will like the sauce. This one smells ok, nothing too special one way or another.

I also tend to try the sauces straight. This is mostly out of curiosity and I want to get a feel of what the flavor is like solo, which helps me not only determine what effect it's having, but also to use as a predictor for where it might be be used. The taste of this by itself was not what I consider enjoyable. I'm not a big fan of papaya in general and orange Habanero is not ever going to be at the top of my list of favorite peppers, especially in terms of taste. I've had a love/hate relationship with it for a long time and a large part of my consumption of it was the lack, for years, of anything else either hotter or in that range.

Starting the sauce with apple cider vinegar does a nice job of keeping this from being overly sweet, especially considering the peaches and pineapple that high in the list of ingredients, but I found it added an odd complexion that I frequently found distracting. It's a flavorful sauce, but not a taste wonderful enough to stand on its own with whatever it's eaten with. Lighter meats work better with this sauce and it does a very nice job on sides, where the slight amount of heat adds nicely and the flavors, especially if savory in nature, do a good job of meshing together. I love sweet/hot and really wanted to like this, but it's a miss for me.

Bottom line: Sometimes you run into these, these unique sauces, unlike anything else out there, that a lot of thought and design went into, that are decent enough sauces, but just don't work. I didn't hate the taste or anything; it wasn't awful. I just didn't find it hugely compatible with my palate and I tried it on perhaps the widest variety of any food to date. I don't have any instance where I thought it particularly shone and it's hard to see where there would be a place for it.

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 2
       Flavor: 6
       Flexibility: 5
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 4

Lynchburg Jalapeno Hot Sauce Review

Historic Lynchburg Tennessee Whiskey Jalapeno Hot Sauce

I picked this up mainly because I haven't really spent a lot of time on the jalapeno end of sauces. While I like the flavoring of jalapeno a great deal, my experiences with the sauces has been flatly underwhelming. I don't think it lends itself particularly well in that arena, nowhere near the level of something like cayennes, for instance, but I've been really impressed by the artistry of the various sauce concotioneers lately and figured it might be worthwhile to give that sector a shot.

When I first opened this bottle, I was pretty impressed. It was a very pleasant-tasting sauce overall, had a good freshness and the Jack Daniels gave it somewhat of a unique tang. It worked somewhat well to very well with a variety of things. As the bottle has worn on, especially given the near absence of heat to this, it is taking on overtones of ketchup, so much so that I've checked the label a few times to make sure that tomatoes aren't somehow a part of this sauce. If they are, they're not listed, but given the listed ingredients, it really shouldn't be that reminiscent of a condiment I rarely use and somewhat dislike, which is also the case with most commercial barbeque sauces.

As I've noted, the heat is largely missing here and while I will probably finish out this bottle, the rather uncomplicated nature of the sauce is working against the freshness and vibrancy of when I first opened it and given the lack of heat, I'd almost rather have something else. If I liked ketchup more, that would probably not be the case and I think this blended with ketchup would make a fine fry sauce.

Bottom line: While the most apt description I can think for this is that it's a pleasant-tasting sauce, given the lack of heat and reminder of other sauces I don't like much, for $7/bottle, I don't see myself ever getting this again. It also reinforces somewhat why I don't bother with that end of the market.

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 0
       Flavor: 8
       Flexibility: 6
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 2

Overall: 4