Wicked Cactus Aliento Del Diablo Hot Sauce Review

Wicked Cactus Aliento Del Diablo Hot Sauce

At the time I saw a lot of production out of Wicked Cactus, this was the hottest they were offering. Not sure if they're still around, as they've kind of dropped off the radar a bit. They had some hallmarks and one of them was for using Ghost Pepper chili dust to spike nearly everything. It tasted a lot like they were using smoked dust, which I didn't mind and in a way, it sort of made sense to give all of their stuff a recognizable signature note...however, often that note was the one pealing the loudest and it wasn't always necessarily the best one to have there.

As to this, it is basically a liquefied version of that note, more or less. This sauce has one of the worst suspension problems I've seen and it takes near-constant agitation to keep it in line. This, as you may expect, is a monumental pain and frankly the sauce isn't flavorful enough to make this too worthwhile. It actually strikes me more as a heat/flavor enhancer than actual sauce, though the heat is pretty far from considerable here.

"Aliento del Diablo" translates literally to "breath of devil", but they more probably meant Devil's Breath and smelling someone else's breath tends not to be super pleasurable and while they meant this for the sort of fiery connotations, it is more the other one that come into the fore here. The first ingredient is anything other than a pepper, which always makes me doubt immediately the veracity of claims of "scorching" or otherwise heat. If I really wanted the smoky sort of pepper taste here, which sort of strikes me a bit more as Habanero, then I could just buy the dust myself rather than use this sauce, mostly because I don't have to constantly agitate that.

Bottom line: As the *ahem* "torchbearer" of the Wicked Cactus line, it was neither the hottest nor the most flavorful and far from the best. It is a sauce that does not particularly go with anything, unless you intend on cooking with it, but that's more just making lemonade at that point. More or less a total misfire, from nearly any aspect.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 4
            Flavor: 3
            Flexibility: 2
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 2