OK, back home and have finally had a chance to see all of the results.
I am beyond floored - first, my congratulations to Robin Case, the brilliant artist behind the Dia del Perro label. I'm thrilled to announce here that she is already working on another label for me - one that I'm very excited about. Hopefully it will debut this fall. Now the challenge is to make another sauce worthy of her artwork.
I'll also be announcing a new sauce that I'm beyond excited about very soon that will (hopefully) debut at the Albuquerque Fiery Food & BBQ festival in March. It's dramatically different than anything in my lineup now, and it may well be my best sauce to date. Details to come soon, but I can tell you that it will be made with Scotch Bonnet chiles (among others), and the heat level will be close to Pink Label.
I had a pretty good haul last year too, and a few people thought I'd entered 20+ categories (it was closer to 9) - so this year I wanted to go minimal. I entered just 3 sauces in 3 categories. With the new style of THPAs, those 3 got me 9 entries.
To win back-to-back Overall #1 THPAs, especially with the level of competition here, is beyond my wildest expectations - congratulations again to everyone on this list. This is truly an assembly of some of the best fiery food making talent in the industry and I'm proud to know so many of you and call you friends. I hope to try some of the other products on this list soon, so to those sauce-makers I've not yet had the pleasure of trading with please feel free to reach out to me via PM if you're interested in trying Lucky Dog, and maybe we can work out a trade.
Thanks to everyone for the kind words - this is one hell of a way to kick off the new year!
And thanks to The Hot Pepper for getting this out and for keeping folks posted when there was a delay. The countdown clock was an awesome touch!
Scoville DeVille said:
LDHS wins in an "Extra Hot" category. wow.
Didn't see that comin' but it makes me so very goddam happy!
Well done sir.
I know, right!