od lovers, still hosted by Dave DeWitt (known as the “Pope of Peppers") and his company, Sunbelt Shows, Inc., is now held in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is this show that presents the Scovie Awards; these are really the ones to win. A Scovie is a badge of honour for a hot sauce.
The name Scovie comes from Scoville Unit, the measure of hotness of a sauce and gets it’s name from its inventor Wilbur Scoville who developed the test in 1912 to measure the heat of a pepper. Bell peppers range from 0-100 Scoville Units while pure capsaicin ranks about 16,000,000. Tabasco sauce is about 3 to 5,000, any sauce above 100,000 is getting seriously hot and just a Habanero pepper itself is about 300,000 scoville Units.
Then in 1989 Blair Lazar created the “Death Sauce” range of hot sauces in New Jersey, US. His first Reserve sauce was called 2AM, the name originating from when Blair was in the Bar Business, 2 a.m. was the closing time and this was the closest thing to legal he could use to get the drunks out of the bar. Apparently it always worked, he made 4 Wings with his potion and if the customer could eat all four they could stay all night, needless to say no one stayed. Blair is a master of marketing, went on to create the 3AM and limited editions 4, 5 and 6AM sauces, really food additives, 6AM is over 10 million Scoville Units.
In 1990 the first Austin Hot Sauce Festival, hosted by the Austin Chronicle, was staged. Another showcase for new produces and several of the first shows winners go onto commercial success. This cements Austin’s Hot Sauce Festival as a launch-pad for hot sauces.
Hot sauce is now big business in the US. In 1992 Salsa replaced Ketchup as Americas number one condiment. The race was on to cash in on the new ‘hot’ craze and by 1994 the Austin Hot Sauce Festival gets 350 entries into its competitions. Success at the show becomes a virtual guarantor of commercial success.
Also creating a buzz at this time was Dave Hirschkop. A similar story to Blair, Dave was running a Mexican restaurant in College Park, Maryland, called Burrito Madness. The food was obviously spicy and in an attempt to drive out the late-night unruly customers Dave started making his sauce hotter and hotter. Finally resorting to the addition of industrial flavour enhancer called oleoresin capsicum. This is concentrated heat, offering the ability to create a hot sauce above and beyond what can be manufactured from chillies alone, it’s like super-charging your sauce. Despite everything, this new ‘Insanity’ sauce gained a following and Dave entered it into the 1993 National Fiery Food Show. It didn’t win… better than that, it got banned… a marketing man’s dream. The reason for the ban was as a result of an incident involving a man with a minor respiratory problem. Dave’s bottle now contains the warning notice "Use this product one drop at a time. Keep away from eyes, pets and children. Not for people with heart or respiratory problems."
From this point on the race is on to produce mouth-searing sauces, hotter an hotter, driving the chilli-heads insane. Dave took to wearing a straight-jacket at hot sauce shows to underline how insane anyone would have to be to try his sauces. It certainly worked since Insanity is now one of the biggest brands in hot sauce.
Hot sauce is by now ingrained in the culture of America and is big business. In 1994 the two biggest players, Pace and Old El Paso controlled about half of the market for Mexican sauces in the US. The market was still growing and attracting outside interest. Two landmark deals saw both of these companies change hands in 1994. Pace was bought by the Campbell Soup Company for an astronomical $1.1 billion, about five times Pace's 1994 estimated sales of $220 million, an amazingly high sales multiple. And Pillsbury, a division of the giant British food and beverage company, Grand Metropolitan PLC, purchased Pet Foods, maker of Old El Paso Mexican foods for $2.6 billion. Terry Thompson, a spokesperson for Pillsbury, called Old El Paso "one of the crown jewels" of brand names.
And the final watershed in