Gindo’s – Ghost of Christmas Past (2025 Edition)

Bitter: ⭐✰✰✰✰

Salty: ⭐⭐✰✰✰

Sour/Tangy: ⭐⭐✰✰✰

Sweet: ⭐⭐⭐⭐✰

Umami: ⭐⭐✰✰✰

Heat: ⭐⭐⭐✰✰✰✰✰✰✰

Quick Flavor Notes: Sweet, Fruity, Pepper-flavor

Recommended: Yes

Texture: Medium, sticky, some small bits

Ingredients: Yellow Bell Pepper, Distilled Vinegar, WAter, Spicy Pepper Blend (habanero, ghost, scotch bonnet, aji limon, crimson horizon, blue ghost peach, God stopper, pimenta cream, 7 pot Primo), Pineapple Juice, Honey, Organic Cane Sugar, Fruit Juice Blend (pineapple, apple, orange, peach, papaya, apricot, ascorbic acid), Mirin (corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, water, rice, glucose syrup, vinegar, sodium benzoate), Pear, Lychee, Sea Salt, Xanthan Gum, Spices

Gindo’s began their Ghost of Christmas series of hot sauces in 2014 after receiving a bounty of exotic peppers from their local growers during the last harvest of the season before the frosts in near their Chicago-area shop. Since then Gindo’s has released the Ghost of Christmas series – featuring three unique hot sauces each year – every year for the holiday season. Each year the peppers and other ingredients used are different making each year’s release a unique experience never to be recreated again. After absolutely loving last year’s release I eagerly awaited this one. Let’s see how they stack up.

The 2025 Ghost of Christmas Past is a designed as a Caribbean style sauce to pay tribute to the early days of chile pepper use. The sauce is chock full of tropical flavors including pineapple, orange, and papaya juices plus other fruit juices including apple, pear, apricot, and peach. The sauce features a wide variety of chiles including habaneros and scotch bonnets as well as super-hots in 7 Pot Primos as ghost peppers. What’s more interesting are some of the exotic peppers used. The most common is the aji limon – a Peruvian pepper known for its bright and citrussy flavor. Some I’d never heard of include the Crimson Horizon, a hybrid between a 7 pot bubblegum and a purple ornamental pepper, the Blue Ghost Peach, a hybrid of several other ghost pepper hybrids with a striking color, the God Stopper, which in addition to having a very cool name is a hybrid of the 7 Pot Primo and other peppers, and the Pimenta Cream which is a cross between a ghost pepper and a Brazilian black pepper known as Pimenta de Neyde. Since most of the peppers involved are super-hots or exotic super-hot hybrids this sauce also includes quite a bit of sugars (aside from the already sweet fruit juices) to balance it out including honey and cane sugar plus some sweet Asian ingredients including mirin (Japanese sweet rice wine) and lychee.

You can see all of the sugars in Ghost of Christmas Past in its texture which is very glossy and almost syrupy. While not chunky you can see pepper bits clearly in the sauce. The aroma of the tropical fruits mixes with the chiles in the aroma. The sweetness and tropical fruits are very prominent in the flavor as well. This sauce does nail the Caribbean sweet-hot pepper sauce vibe and the fruity pepper flavors blend very well with the actual fruit juices in the sauce. Even though super-hots can sometimes have a bitter or slightly chemical edge to their flavor I don’t pick that up here. You can tell super-hot chiles are used as they do have a unique high-capsaicin flavor in general but this sauce is also milder than you’d expect from the peppers used. Compared to last year’s version which I thought was bordering on chile head only territory this one feels much more accessible in terms of heat while still having enough kick to keep chile heads happy. The ghost pepper and 7 pot varieties in this sauce do lend it a bit of smoky depth and there’s a very satisfying salty note that hits the tongue right after the sweetness, similar to chocolates with bits of sea salt in them. The overall heat level is similar to a strong habanero or scotch bonnet sauce.

Caribbean style sauces tend to be flexible and Ghost of Christmas Past is as well. This sauce is quite good on pizza, gives a bit of that pineapple pizza effect without actual chunks of pineapple on the pizza. I also really enjoyed this on a ham sandwich, and tropical flavors always go well with ham. It’s also surprisingly good on kebabs, especially the lamb kofta, though again lamb traditionally does pair well with sweet flavors.

I’m happy to recommend Gindo’s Ghost of Christmas Past 2025 Edition. This sauce is only available as part of the full Ghost of Christmas set, and I’ll be posting my reviews of the others soon (though spoiler alert, they’re also amazing). This is a very limited edition sauce pack and once it’s gone it’s gone and won’t reappear until the new versions with new recipes come out next holiday season. As of this writing it’s still available on the Gindo’s website.