Photo by Jason Anfinsen

Mmmm, BBQ sauce. Let’s be honest, it can make or break your grilling experience. Too spicy, too sweet, too bland, there are so many ways to mess it up and so few ways to rescue a good meal gone bad. When sauce is a key factor in taste, what makes certain consumers take risks while reaching toward the shelf of competing flavors? We all have a go-to bottle of BBQ sauce, don’t we? I know I do. But still, each time I approach my favorite flavor I briefly contemplate my decision. This bottle, boring. Poor typography, so-so logo, all around indistinctive label. The other bottles? BAM! Decorated in personality and flooded with adjectives that make my mouth water.

Does what’s wrapped around the bottle properly represent the taste inside? There’s nothing more frustrating than craving a taste explosion and winding up with a sauce that backfires. There’s always the opposite possibility, the labels that over compensate in design may under-whelm in taste.  What’s your experience when searching for a bottle of finger-licking BBQ sauce? Do you go for the go-to or the newbie? Why do you pick that particular bottle and how have the results surprised or disappointed you?

Fun fact: Barbecue sauce can be traced back to the 15th century, when Christopher Columbus brought a sauce back from Hispaniola.