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The first one is Tabasco from USA, which is well-known even in Asia countries due to its effective marketing strategy. Manufactured in Avery Island, the chilies are handpicked and stored in wooden baskets for 3 years with natural mineral salt before taking them out for filtration. With added vinegar, American like to put 2 – 3 drops on hotdog to make the food tastier. Now I know why each Tabasco bottle is so small and pricey.
Next is Sriraja from Thailand. Since the trademark is not registered, there are many copycats out there. The original bottle has Thai words craved on it. They use local wild spur chilies which are produced in traditional way using sun, water, rice vinegar, Thai garlic, sea salt, and sugar. no preservative, coloring, and flavoring added.
The last and the ultimate one is Sudden Death from Blair’s in USA. Seeing the label reminds me of deathmatch in FPS games. Using Mexico and Spain chilies, Sudden Death has Scoville Unit (SU) of 16,000,000, which is 100 times of spur chilies and 6400 times of Tabasco. The chilies are cooked in vacuum for 3 months and only their concentrate is taken out. You will feel your tongue becoming hot in less than 1 second if you pick a drop from the bottle using toothpick. The spiciness will spread your whole tounge within seconds and paralyze it.
As a whole, Blair’s Sudden Death is the ultimate in spiciness. You taste, you die. In term of popularity, Tabasco still sitting on top with the total sales of 10,000,000 bottles so far.