Empress Passion Fruit Mustard Hot Sauce

5 oz bottle - Taiwan

There are five Empress hot sauces: Pineapple Miso, Smoky Hibiscus, Irwin Mango, Passionfruit Mustard, and Ghost Pepper Maqaw. All are distinguishable from each other. They are all really nice with varying degree of heat.

I sampled tasted them in this order based on the names and anticipation that this is the hot to hotter.

When I first sampled these, like all hot sauces, I was cautiously enthusiastic.

We’ve tasted a lot of hot sauces here and in general we don't strive for or crave heat the way some other hot sauce people do. It doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate the spice of life, but we don’t carry a jar of Tabasco sauce in our carry-on just in case we have an unexpected meal. We’re not like that.

I used my nose to confirm the alignment of the order for which I would taste and test. That means the one with the least amount of scary pepper tickle will go first. The one with the most frightening tinge of pepper will go last.

This was my third tasting, and from memory, the first and second rounds had pleasant flavors that did not destroy my taste buds."

To the nose, it’s sweet. You can smell the passionfruit right off the bat along with pepper vinegar and some hidden heat.

The coloring is brownish orange making me feel safe

I dipped my tongue in first to see what’s there.

To the sip it tingles and right away makes me cough. It has a nice flavor and you get a fruity passionate taste, and an overall tingly sensation. That’s quite nice. And there’s definitely heat here.

What’s nice is the remaining flavor on the lips it was quite enjoyable.