This Sunday · Austin, Texas
The 36th festival is Sunday, August 30, 3 to 9 pm at Radio/East. Last year Matanza placed 2nd in the Commercial Bottlers Pepper Sauce category. Here is how the festival works, how to taste 200 sauces without losing your palate, and what we are pouring.
Read the note All 2026 events
Five things to read in any bottle before you decide what it is for: aroma, base, heat curve, finish, and salt-and-acid balance. A repeatable method, with a scoring card.
Jungle Jim's 15th Weekend of Fire in Fairfield, Ohio: about 400 sauces, three tasting sessions, People's Choice for Piñazo, and a taco challenge we presented. Plus the peers who had a big weekend.
A maker explains its own label: why Barbaro Mojo prints a 1 to 10 heat number, what the independent lab Scoville results say (1,992 to 6,500 SHU), and what "mojo criollo" on an ingredient list means.
The method
The Scoville number tells you how hot. It does not tell you what a sauce is for. Read these five things and you will know.
This is the maker talking: five Cuban hot sauces on a mojo criollo base, hand-bottled in Miami, lab-tested from 1,992 to 6,500 Scoville. Code SOMMELIER10 takes 10% off.
PiñazoHeat 6 of 10Pineapple, Fresno, habanero, a little Reaper. People’s Choice, Weekend of Fire 2026.
Shop Piñazo →Brothers Eric and Eddie Stankiewicz, flavor-first sauces built to bring in people who do not usually reach for the bottle: Honey Mango Habanero,…
Chef-owned and small-batch, made by Chef Flaco’s Gourmet Foods. Java Lava (coffee, roasted garlic, habanero, ancho), Bacon Garlic Reaper, Flaming…
Nepali sauces, handcrafted in Texas from recipes handed down through generations of Nepali women, built around a Himalayan pepper. Placed across…
El Havanero (9). The sauce and the pork share a mojo base; a steady habanero curve fits a forty-minute plate.
Jalabáo (3) or Piñazo (6). Quick bites want a front-loaded curve, not a burn that outlasts the food.
Piñazo (6). Acid on acid works when the sauce brings fruit. Two drops per oyster.
Jalabáo
Best Day Ever
El Havanero
Matanza