Zia Chile Traders La Llorona
Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mi6GAdgYvU
The man, the icon, the legend, John Hard has triumphantly returned to the creation of hot sauces out of his new locale in Las Cruces, NM, after departing the shores of Ohio and with that return comes some new ingredients, new flavors, and very new vibes, all of it resonant to the area.We'll get into the sauce proper shortly (skip ahead to paragraph 4 where the review picks up again), but we can't go much further without addressing the name.
La Llorona, while very well known to Mexico, parts of Central America, and the Southwestern US, is not one I had heard of at all, let alone was familiar with, prior to a few years ago. My introduction came in a Batwoman comic, which painted her both as malevolent entity, as well as a tragic figure. I started digging into the lore a bit more and the basic gist is that a woman had either a husband or lover and with that man, had a couple of kids. Somewhere along the lines, she caught him or was otherwise made aware of his infidelity and in a fit of violent rage, drowned both the children and herself, with the man not referenced further, but perhaps was unscathed from to any direct actions from him to her.
In any case, she was tethered to the world, unable to pass on without her children, and condemned to haunt bodies of water, forever fruitlessly searching for her children. Depending on if she is read as a vengeful spirit or not, which also depends on the telling, she is either drowning the children of other women maliciously or in a misguided attempt to reclaim her children. The story itself appears to trace back to Aztec times and there is a lot of suggestion it was modified to represent another figure of legend and allegorically in reference to the native population of women once the Spanish conquistadors arrived. I don't know enough to comment on this, but her story always struck me as a bit sad, with her as victim, first of her husband/lover, then of her own actions and emotions. The tale is now largely one similar to when I was growing up of the "boogeyman," who would come take errant and misbehaving children away, though for La Llorona, it is a reference and admonishment to children to be careful in the waters and not to go out too deep, where she may take them.
I don't understand what she has to do with a hot sauce, unless it has Ghost peppers, given that La Llorona would fit into that category. This sauce, however, has yellow Moruga Scorpions and a Hatch pepper called Lumbre. There is some text on the back about the story but not why the sauce is named after it, so definitely the naming convention is pretty beyond me here. This sauce also has a mustard by way of Southwestern style, which I didn't know existed until this sauce, so both that style, called Bajan, and the Lumbre, are new to me here. As if that wasn't enough, we also have a tropical salad, with pineapple, papaya, and passion fruit, all of it rounded out at the very end with tomato paste, to really get an interesting dynamic going.
This is a very thick sauce, very, very thick, almost too thick (hello tomato paste) to really work well in the usual 5 oz. bottle. Agitating it is somewhat of a chore, but separation is not really an issue here, so just as well, I suppose. I would rather this have been in a squeeze bottle, if possible. It also pours out a bit chunky, thanks to the tropical salad, and there is a grittiness to the texture, most likely from the peppers themselves. The sauce itself looks quite gorgeous, sort of a yellowish orange, and the label art, of La Llorona, is spectacular.
Flavor-wise, we have something that is more a bridge between mustard and hot sauce, than either one of them individually. This might be the first sauce that has done this successfully, though many others have tried. There is definitely a strong mustard presence, but elements such as the tomato paste and tropical salad keep it from going too far in that territory. There is also the bitter superhot notes, and a depth of flavor as well as some subtle taste hints from the tomato paste. The tropical salad more blends in than is its own note, I would say, and might contribute a bit more texturally than in flavor. At times, this will seem to be more of a tropical fruit-based sweet-hot mustard, and at other times, more into a composite flavor, which is one of the neater aspects of this sauce. It works well on a variety of foods, but depending on what you pair with it, you'll get a different, sometimes vastly different, flavor experience.
Bottom line: The name John Hard needs no introduction from me and he's an absolute legend, whose return should be heralded. The sauce I find a bit confusing, as it doesn't seem to have direct natural tie-ins, but if you're like me and love to take a wonderfully flavored sauce, like this one, and apply it to different foods in the name of testing and experimentation, you'll have a grand old time...as I am with this.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 2
Flavor: 8
Flexibility: 7
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8
Overall: 6
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