Tabasco Introduces A New Hot Sauce Flavor And It's Not Pumpkin Spice

It's that magical time of year when food companies have decided to dress themselves up for the holidays, with more sugar and spice and sometimes garlic. Tabasco, the Louisiana-based hot sauce company, is no exception. This year, Thrillist reports, it's introducing Rocoto Pepper Sauce.

Rocoto peppers grow in Central and South America and have a fruity taste profile. On the Scoville scale, which measures hotness, they're between 50,000 and 350,000 SHU. (Yeah, I know.) That's between four and 40 times hotter than a jalapeño. Which is also imprecise, but the salient information here is that it's very, very hot. Original Tabasco is in the 2,500-5,000 SHU range. Scorpion Sauce, the hottest Tabasco manufactures, is 5,000-10,000 SHU.

Rocoto Pepper Sauce, Thrillist assures us, won't be as hot as that. It won't even be as hot as the Original Tabasco. It will be a mere 1,500 SHU. "This is because the Rocoto peppers are tamed with a blend of maple syrup, cinnamon, cloves, cardamon, nutmeg, and black pepper — resulting in a sweet, spicy, and fragrant sauce," Thrillist explains. Wait... maple syrup, cinnamon, cloves, cardamon, nutmeg... This all sounds eerily familiar. Is Tabasco going pumpkin spice on us after all?