'Diamond Reserve' Tabasco Sauce Will Bring Your Food a Splash of Fancy Heat

They're calling it the "Champagne" of hot sauces.

Generally speaking, no one would probably confuse a bottle of Tabasco sauce — fiery red contents visible through the clear glass — with a fancy bottle of Champagne. But that could happen with Tabasco's 150th Anniversary Diamond Reserve Red Sauce, a limited-edition (get it while it’s hot!) offering the brand has released to mark its 150th birthday.

The milestone-marking sauce comes in a demure, darkly opaque bottle brightly emblazoned with contrasting gold lettering. It is topped with fancy gold foil. Around its neck is a gold band lettered with the phrase "Since 1868" – in case counting backwards from 150 is a challenge for you. The whole deluxe thing comes in a golden box with a red tab reminding buyers that it is "Made With Rare Mash."

So ... very ... fancy. And it has a fancy price to match: $34.95 for a 6 fluid ounces of Tabasco.

If you shelled out that kind of dough for a bottle of Champagne, for instance, you’d typically be getting just over 25 ounces of sparkly golden goodness. But that price seems like a bargain compared to what someone is selling it for on eBay: $449! (Free shipping, though.)

The thing is, the special "celebratory" Tabasco Diamond Reserve Sauce is not just any Tabasco sauce. It has been "made from a selection of the finest tabasco peppers on Avery Island [Louisiana, where Tabasco parent McIlhenny Company is based], chosen for their superior color, texture and robustness," according to the Tabasco website.

These special peppers have then been "mashed with a small amount of salt, then aged — some for up to fifteen years — and blended with sparkling white wine vinegar" in order to create a pepper sauce with "exceptional complexity," but retaining Tabasco sauce’s "signature flavor and vibrancy."

Your humble scrambled eggs or Bloody Mary never had it so good.

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