Lola's Family Reserve Hot Sauce Review

Lola’s Family Reserve

After being generally unimpressed with the other 5 sauces I’ve done from this company, I wasn’t really expecting a lot out of this one. I bought it on a whim, same time as I bought the Mango one (reviewed elsewhere here) on vacation in Minnesota last summer, figuring that with the extra expense they put into the packaging (not pictured, but it came in a cardboard box, similar to how Tabasco used to), this might be a better, or at least hotter, sauce.

It turned out to be both better and hotter. If you picture the Valentina Black Label, with a substantial boost of heat, yet sharing some of the flavor characteristics of the Arizona Gunslinger sauces I’ve done (particularly with how overly salty they are), and steered more at being an everyday style sauce, you’ve about got it. This one does seem slightly thinner than the Valentina, but the color and texture are much more in line with that. It doesn’t seem like they were trying to make a Mexican-style sauce so much as an everyday sauce and the results were successful in that regard.

For a good everyday sauce, it needs to basically run the gamut of non-specialized food types (and by my reckoning, Asian foods and desserts would be considered specialized) and at least work acceptably in those scenarios and this one does, up to and including Mexican food. Considering the lineage - there are many references to the Original (also reviewed elsewhere here) on the label - it is small wonder. I wouldn’t say it’s as good as the Tamazula Black Label (yes, also reviewed elsewhere here), which is my current go-to in that regard, but it does work decently. So too on pizza and chicken tendies and on the wide variety of other sundries one might reasonably expect from a good, solid everyday sauce.

In addition to this reading as overly salty (enough to drag down the Flavor rating a bit), it also lists the mighty mighty Reaper as the first ingredient. Also included in the fun are Jalapenos and Habaneros, but it is those two that seem to constitute most of the flavor, with some notable heat, probably right at the line a non-chilehead would consider too much, but with no accompanying Reaper or bitter superhot flavor element, which I admittedly find kind of puzzling. Lime is also listed, but thankfully it does not factor prominently into proceedings here.

Bottom line: This is easily the hottest and best sauce Lola’s has produced and by my accounting, the only one really worth bothering with from them.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 10
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 6