Reading a Cuban Hot Sauce Label: The 1-to-10 Scale, Lab Scoville, and the Mojo Base

This note is about our own sauces, so read it as the maker talking. It exists because the same three questions come up at every festival table: what does the number mean, how many Scoville is that, and what is mojo doing in a hot sauce.

The number on the label

Every Bárbaro Mojo bottle carries a heat number from 1 to 10. It is a tasting scale, not a lab unit, calibrated to this line: Jalabáo 3, Piñazo 6, Best Day Ever 8, El Havanero 9, Matanza 10. It comes straight from the heat-curve step in the tasting method: onset, peak, and how long it lingers, judged on food. A 3 is a mild kick on eggs. A 10 is the one people ask for by name.

The lab numbers

We also sent all five to an independent lab. Results: Jalabáo 1,992 SHU, Piñazo 2,370, Best Day Ever 4,470, El Havanero 5,170, Matanza 6,500. Two things stand out. The order matches the tasting scale, which is the point. And the top of the line is 6,500, which is hotter than Tabasco and far below any extract sauce, because a finished sauce is mostly base and only partly pepper. The lab results page has the certificates.

What mojo criollo is doing on the ingredient list

Mojo criollo is the Cuban marinade: sour orange, garlic, oregano, cumin, salt. It is the base of every sauce in the line, which is why they taste like Cuban food first and pepper second. On the label it appears as its own ingredient, and its citrus concentrates carry small amounts of food-safe preservatives (potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate) into four of the five sauces. Piñazo is built on a pineapple-juice mojo instead and does not carry them. We would rather you read that here than discover it on the back of the bottle.

The rest of the label, in plain words

• Peppers: jalapeño (Jalabáo), Fresno and habanero with a little Carolina Reaper (Piñazo), habanero and Reaper (Best Day Ever, Matanza), habanero (El Havanero). Heat comes from the peppers; there are no extracts.
• Vinegar: there is some in every bottle; it is not the flavor base.
• Xanthan gum: in four of the five, so the sauce does not separate. Piñazo has none.
• Gluten-free, vegan, no high-fructose corn syrup, no MSG. True for all five.
• Made in Miami, hand-bottled in small batches, by a company founded in November 2020.

If you want the sauces in heat order, the 4-pack is the four everyday ones (3, 6, 8, 9) and ships free; Matanza is sold on its own.