Gindo’s – Ghost of Christmas Past

For the past ten years Gindo’s has been releasing special limited edition holiday hot sauces under the Ghost of Christmas series. Each year the sauces are different but embody tradition, current trends, and future looking flavors with the Ghost of Christmas Past, Ghost of Christmas Present, and Ghost of Christmas Future sauces respectively. While this is the first year I’ve ordered the set from them (spoiler ahead) all three sauces are phenomenal so I will absolutely be making it a holiday tradition moving forward. Gindo’s uses locally grown peppers and special varietals in these sauces. While I opened them all at once to enjoy over the holidays each sauce has a unique flavor profile so each deserves its own review.

Ghost of Christmas Past is described by Gindo’s as a tribute to the origins of chili peppers embodying tropical warmth, depth, and nostalgia. This sauce is loaded with tropical (and not-so-tropical) fruits including mango, yuzu, papaya, blood orange, pomelo, pineapple, peach, and more. To balance out that sweetness the sauce comes loaded with hot, extra hot, and super hot peppers including sugar rush peach, ghost pepper, scorpion pepper, Carolina reaper, 7 pot pepper, fatalli pepper, aji peach pepper, and more. This is certainly a kitchen-sink type approach to a sauce but the flavor comes across as incredibly cohesive and clean, you’d never know there were so many ingredients unless you looked at the label.

Gindo’s absolutely nailed the flavor profile of nostalgia and classic tropical hot sauces with Ghost of Christmas Past. My first impression was that it tastes like what a Caribbean scotch bonnet sauce would taste like if scotch bonnets came in a super-hot variety. There are none of the acerbic notes that can sometimes accompany super-hot chiles. There’s big pepper flavor, but it’s a sweet fruity pepper flavor which is reinforced by the fruits in the sauce. With as many sweet ingredients as this has there would be a risk of it tipping into the too-sweet realm, but with the serious peppers used there’s enough heat to beautifully balance that out. It’s a warming bouquet of peppers and fruit in your mouth with a heat that creeps up and keeps building the more of it you enjoy. Some unexpected ingredients including white balsamic vinegar and mirin give some additional depth to this sauce along with just a hint of umami making it even more crave able.

Ghost of Christmas Past is the most traditional of the three Ghost of Christmas sauces and I found that because of that it seemed to be the most flexible in terms of pairings. This style is of course great with any Caribbean or Latin cuisine, and is a natural fit with a salty picadillo or some crispy empanadas. It’s excellent with breakfast foods and also does a bang-up job on chicken wings as well as on grilled chicken and pork. Even though this sauce has some serious heat and a nice background sweetness it’s also light enough that it lets the natural flavors of foods shine through and went very well with grilled salmon and some pan seared cod also.

These sauces are only available as a three-pack with the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present, and Future together, but the set as a whole is a very easy recommendation. If you love scotch bonnet sauces but always wished for more heat then this sauce alone is worth the price of admission for the entire set.

Ingredients: Yellow Bell Pepper, Distilled Vinegar, Water, Mango, Sugar Rush Peach Pepper, Aji Peach Pepper, Reaper Pepper, Ghost Pepper, Scorpion Pepper, Aji Limon Pepper, Aji Rico Pepper, Fatali Pepper, Aji Charapita Pepper, Blue Agave Nectar, Apricot Juice, Peach Juice, Pineapple, Pear Juice, Papaya, Cantalop, Organic Cane Sugar, Sea Salt, Manuka Honey, 7 Pot Pepper, White Balsamic, Processo Vinegar, Mirin (Corn syrup, Fermented rice extract (alcohol, salt, citric acid, water, salt), Pomelo, Yuzu, Blood Orange Zest, Xanthan Gum, Ground Peppercorn

Heat Level: 5/10. This sauce packs a solid heat punch that may be too hot for those without experience with hotter sauces but will be a nice strong medium-hot for chile heads.