Hot Thoughts: Tequlia Habanero BBQ Sauce

Posted June 23, 2007 by Anthony

I debated whether or not to do this review. So instead of actual review I am going to leave this more as a commentary.

President’s Choice, the private line of Loblaws the largest grocery chain in Canada has released the Tequila Habanero sauce this summer. It is a 1.5 Litre bottle and the sauce taste wise is actually quite good. There is no heat surprisingly for a sauce BBQ sauce that has the word Habanero in it but for a BBQ sauces sake it is good. The best thing about this sauce though is the fact that it has the word habanero in it regardless of the negligible amount that is really in there.

Now while Loblaws will sell thousands of these at $3.99 a bottle (which is 1.5 litres) I am hoping this will bring some awareness to the general consumer that for the longest time has been scared by the hab. Perhaps by picking this bottle up it will be the culinary equivalent of them bungee jumping.

This awareness can lead people who are adventurous enough now that they have discovered the hab to maybe scope out”¦”¦shall we say real BBQ sauces or just hotter foods in general. While this is wishful thinking the extreme size of this bottle and its $3.99 price point are really going to be a turn off for the consumer who goes elsewhere and see a 10oz bottle of BBQ sauce for twice the price or a 5oz hot sauce ringing in at $8-10.

Yes, this sauce has high fructose corn syrup, habanero and tequila are listed near the bottom of the ingredients list and the heat ranking for this is a self proclaimed 2 pepper on a 3 heat pepper scale for Loblaws heat rating index (even their 3 pepper ranking is mild at best). Only if the general consumer had this next to an independent sauce companies with the ingredients list flashing at them would they see the difference in quality.

The marketing team at Loblaws has now got a great hold here and I am sure next on their list will be a more potent hab sauce that will still be pretty tame on heat scale, but by offering it at a way low price, we all lose out here. It is only the true chili-head out there that will know the difference but for the people who think Taco Bell Sauce and Wendy sauce is hot, they will think this is great stuff.

Opening up the fridge after writing this and looking at the dozens of hot sauces I have in there gave me new appreciation for the hard work and uniqueness each sauce maker puts into their sauce. Even though some makers have the ability to mass produce more than others, they still maintain that authentic, unquivering attention to detail and passion in their creations rather than masking a product born of survey polls and big budget marketing.

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