Red Clay Peach
Note: This the 300th TSAAF full sauce review.
Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtgEefIvXHg
I found this whilst milling around Whole Foods one day, an unusual visit for me normally, but I have found some interesting sauces over the years on those shelves here and there. As is my wont, I generally peruse the hot sauce shelves of any grocery store of which I'm not familiar. Sometimes one lucks out and can find something solid that may not be comes across elsewhere. Most times not, to be sure, but sometimes...
The name Red Clay seemed familiar and it wasn't until I got back online at Amazon to look for something else, a CD, as I recall now, that I remembered where I'd seen the name and it was from a line of hot honeys they'd made, something else I spent some time trying to track down as it seems a lot like that is the hot new trendy market segment. Buying them on Amazon is not a cheap proposition, but is good to find various names to keep an eye out for to do FOH non-sauce content or to watch to see if it goes on sale. When I saw the hot sauce in Whole Foods, it seemed like a good opportunity to check it out, as their honey contains apple cider vinegar, which dilutes me interest both pretty immediately and pretty considerably. Also, it was a peach hot sauce, which, even among fruit-based sweet hot sauces being one of my preferences, piqued my interest even more.
It's a good thing I spent the $4 to get acquire this, as it will save me from having to bother with the hot honey. There are a number of shared ingredients, somehow, which gets away from the concept of pepper-spiked honey, which I want to explore, and into a realm of something else, which I do not. This particular sauce is another that raises the question of whether or not a sauce with no heat can be rightfully called a hot sauce. It does have Habaneros listed, but way at the end. Up front we have sorghum extract (a new one for me), the apple cider vinegar, by far the dominant flavor, and peach puree concentrate, which I feel is kinda sorta cheating. Regardless, it does not end up in a well-flavored sauce. In fact, I immediately opened another after opening this, which is fairly rare. I agitated it considerably, no help there. I tried chilling it, as some sauces seem to have an uptick in flavor when cold, but to no avail.
The consistency is very smooth, probably the best thing about it. It's a lighter consistency than I would have normally expected, which makes sticking to food somewhat of a challenge. On the other hand, this is not a good sauce, so that's less of a downside. Indeed, this sauce is the first of 2022 to challenge my resolve to do a full year of FOH support videos for the hot sauces posted in this blog. This is right on the border of me not doing it, but I probably will. There is precious little heat and the taste is this odd miasma of what I presume to be the sorghum extract combined with the apple cider vinegar and it rather notably drags down whatever foods it's used on. Normally, for fruit-based sweet hots, I would use it on meat and since we're well into grilling season, I also tried it there, hoping to rid myself of some of that overpowering apple cider vinegar taste and get to what I'd hoped was the heart of the sauce, but nope, nothing doing there.
Bottom line: The worst sauce I've had so far this year and another where I actively question whether someone actually tasted the product before it was bottled and sent out to an otherwise unsuspecting public.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 0
Flavor: -20
Flexibility: 0
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0
Overall: 0
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