Bottle Description: Conquering Lion Hickory Smoke XXX hot Sauce is handcrafted in small batches using locally grown tomatoes grown without chemical fertilizers or pesticides. The peppers and tomatoes are picked at peak ripeness and then smoked using 100% Appalachian Hickory grown on our farm. The resulting sauce is full of flavor not just heat. It is naturally hot and contains no pepper extracts, GMOs, or any artificial ingredients. XXX is not for the weak of heart

Ingredients: Smoked Tomatoes, smoked habanero peppers, smoked cayenne peppers, water, lime juice, cane vinegar spices and sea salt.

Appearance: Red and brown almost like a BBQ sauce with specks of pepper in it.

Smell: Smells almost precisely like BBQ sauce. Every component of this sauce’s aroma is light and faint. You almost have to sniff pretty hard to get that BBQ smell. There is no smell that indicates that other ingredients such as peppers or even vinegar are present.

Taste: There are two tastes here. 1)Vinegar 2) Hickory smoked…something. I’ve been holding off this review because I don’t dislike the taste of this sauce and I certainly am not fond of it. The taste of peppers is almost untraceable and all you really have is watered down BBQ and vinegar. Even with those glaring errors, this sauce isn’t bad.

Heat: (7/10) Tingles the tongue but burns the lips.

Field Test: Here’s where the sauce fares much better. Because of its characteristic of having such a light flavor this sauce shines on food. While other sauces become overbearing and try to dominate your palette, this Conquering Lion sauce blends in nicely and ADDS to the flavor of your food. I doused some on a rice dish I had heated up and it worked out nicely. This sauce is pretty good on anything that needs a little bit of BBQ flavor.

Final Word: If I were to judge this taste alone it would be abysmal but it gets points for being such an excellent complement to almost any dish.

Overall: 6.8/10.