UPDATE: Video support now available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6uCtnbfSMo It occurs to me that all of the Private Selection line of stuff is limited edition. Perhaps Kroger just commissions whoever is making this for an x-volume batch and just calls it good. I don't know but Calabria, that delicious bit of Italy, is responsible for a number of Private Selection items, including salami. I was unaware, until I found this sauce, there is also something called a Calabrian Chile Pepper. There are also some Greek chilis (Puglia) and even a sweet red Italian varietal (Campagna). If this is not sounding hot, it is with good reason. This is not a particularly piquant hot sauce, though it does throw in Habanero, for good measure, at the very end.
It lists as being an excellent choice for things like pizza, pasta and other Italian-ish delectables, and indeed, it does do a fair job on every one of those I tried it on. In fact, this is one of the most tested sauces I think I've had, including an application I almost never use (see the video of this sauce). It did not work amazingly well on the staples of fried chicken fingers or fish sticks, but worked well on every other application, including tacos, which should give you some type of idea how overall incredibly flexible it is.
The taste, though, doesn't strike me as something so much meant for the foods listed on it, but aimed much more at Mexican or Spanish cuisine. Despite having a veritable laundry list of stuff, the flavor profile reminds me an awful lot of something specific to the Upper Midwest, a "hot sauce" that comes in a round plastic tub. Called Village Hot sauce and coming out of Grand Forks, North Dakota, it is a fairly bland, sort of one-note concoction relying heavily on tomatoes, which meld well with what spices (they also claim Jalapeno) they add in there. This sauce is very reminiscent of that (people in MN & ND) will know what I mean, although this one is slightly more bitter than the Village Hot Sauce, which is overly one-dimensional to the point where I find it boring. It does serve as a great entry point, however, into hot sauce in general.
Bottom line: This is the first sauce I've had that is this mild get anywhere near SOTY territory, but yet, here we are, another candidate for 2020. This is also an outstanding hot sauce, like the one I mentioned in the preceding paragraph, to use to introduce neophytes to the wonders of hot sauce.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 1
Flavor: 9
Flexibility: 9
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10
Overall: 8
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