Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue. Check him out on Facebook or, better yet, head on over to his new online outlet where you can shop the widest selection available anywhere, www.burnyourtongueonline.com.
This is one of those sauces where I'm not sure how to approach it. I would not normally be inclined to pick this up, with the ingredient list in the name not indicating a pepper of any kind. In a bit of BLUF action, I will say that how much you like this sauce will directly depend on how much you like agave. To me, it gets a lot more hype than it deserves and I struggle to think of anything with it as an ingredient that I like. I can tolerate certain margaritas, for instance, but if given my druthers, will tend elsewhere. That said, I try to be as open as possible in food adventuring, as long as there is not an ingredient that makes me actually sick or that I have tried enough to find wholly unpleasant. A read through the archives will give you an indication as to what those are. Agave, I will say, is not among them.I also have some pause with the Peach part of things. Peach, even if you're eating one fresh, is a fairly light, subtle, even delicate flavor. Most of the sauces I've had with peach as an ingredient tend to have the peach washed out nearly immediately by whatever else is in there. Sometimes the result is still a great sauce, but peach is a flavor for me that, even if artificially amplified, still retains that delicate nature.
This particular sauce seemed to me to be flavored more along the lines of Mexican cuisine. I tried it on both pizza, breakfast burrito, and chicken strips as well. Despite the website feeling this can function as a barbeque sauce, for me, the only way that works is to mix it into actual barbeque sauce. They also mention a smokiness, which I don't find. There is an earthiness that tends to be in a lot of Mexican-style sauces, but it is countered by the strongly present sweetness. Here, indeed, the conundrum. The sauce's flavor profile strikes me as more Mexican, yet the sweetness precludes that working well in that setting. It is an interesting and unique-tasting sauce, but does not seem to have a natural home. It worked the best on pizza, but there's still quite a number of other sauces I'd rather have first there.
Heat-wise, it does have a bit of a spark to it. I'd put it right around a 3. That part was very pleasant and as I kept going with the sauce, I minded it less. I don't really have room for a sauce to grow on me, though. While I admire the spirit of experimentalism (and I think this is a very well-crafted and blended sauce, overall), this does not quite hit for me.
Bottom line: Fans of agave and heat should give this a shot. Very unique flavoring, but one that is just not resonant with me.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 3
Flavor: 4
Flexibility: 3
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4
Overall: 4
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