Cholula: one of the best ubiquitous hot sauces

My first ever review will focus on a fine sauce for fine people. This sauce is Cholula, and I have to say it's one of the best easily available hot sauces for regular people with normal tolerance for spice.
Let's look at the facts:
Cholula is hecho en Mexico...peppers are versitile little beasts, but many good ones grow south of the border. FUN FACT: many Mexican peppers actually originated in China and were brought over and cultivated there!


Good Hurt: Cholula uses a blend of arbol and piquin peppers. Piquin peppers are actually very spicy, so I'd imagine that the amount of pepper per batch is fairly low, because this sauce has no spice at all for Hot Freaks like me, but a decent little kick for regular civilians. I would compare the spice to a low-level, mild kick, similar to a standard Tabasco sauce or vinegar/cayanne/arbol pepper combination. Often times, easy availability of sauce means that, like an American President, say, it must appeal to the masses as much as possible. That means no vulgar names and a palatable level of spice.

Flavor: What it lacks in burning heat, however, it makes up for in solid flavor. Like basically all hot sauces, it has a tangy vinegar base but contains a generous amount of spice for a robust, smokey tomato sort of flavor. Piquin peppers, raw, are very flavorful as well as being hot. I think they did an excellent job of retaining flavor, even if they downplayed the spice.

Availability: If you live on the planet Earth, you're in luck! Cholula is available near you. I'd honestly like to push for this sauce to become the go-to hot sauce instead of the less flavorful, just-as-spicy Tabasco sauce. This sauce's wooden cap makes it stand out just a bit more than the standard hot sauces gracing the shelves of grocery stores and bodegas.

Good for: pizza (I prefer cold), salsas, chicken, steaks, sandwiches...with xanthan gum thickening this sauce, it works really well as a strong alternative to ketsup or mustard without being like either one of those.

RATING:

FLAVOR: ****

HEAT: *1/2
MY REVIEW: 6.8/10

Don't let this rating fool you, however! If you are looking for flavor more than spice, this is a great way to go and I highly recommend it! As far as commercially available hot sauces go, Cholula is a top contender.