Local sauce crafters spicing up our lives one shake at a time

By Jay McKinney

Colorado’s craft economy includes a handful of small businesses that package products in small bottles. Welcome to the world of big flavors.

Whether it’s sprinkled on top or used to influence the entire dish, combinations of spices are at the heart of many meals. We’ve tracked down a few local chefs who are spicing up our lives with tasty cooking options.

Sauce Leopard

After the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many people found themselves scrambling for work to make ends meet. But for Shaun Goodwin and his homegrown company Sauce Leopard, it was a blessing in disguise, giving him a reason to go all in on his passion for making hot sauce. Goodwin had been making homemade sauces for nearly seven years, bottling the smaller batches in bottles he purchased off Amazon, and hand-drawing the logo for each individual one on blank return address labels. Among friends, family and local bands, the sauces were a hit.

When demand increased, the batches began to get bigger and bigger. By the end of 2019, Goodwin had launched an online store for selling the sauces. While the online store showed promise, Goodwin still made the sauces in his home kitchen and relied on a bartending job as his main source of income. But once the pandemic was in full swing and restaurants and bars across the nation were forced to close, Goodwin found himself at a crossroads.

He had gained some confidence with the help of brisk online sales. Goodwin was laid off from his day job, began collecting unemployment and received a stimulus check. Most importantly, he had extra time to do research and apply for the required licensing to take his business mainstream. “Everything just seemed to fall in place, kind of right place, right time,” Goodwin says. “Honestly, if it weren’t for COVID, I don’t think I would have done it.”

More than a year later, Sauce Leopard can be found in nearly 60 stores across Colorado, and Goodwin is happily surprised with the success the company has achieved thus far. He credits connections he’s made over the years and some clever branding for giving him a customer base that would serve as the foundation for Sauce Leopard and help ease his nerves as he took a leap of faith on the new endeavor.

“Even when I first launched it, I was really scared about making it full time, so I was keeping a bartending shift or two, but then they let me go because I didn’t want to be full-time and they wanted full-time people,” Goodwin says. “It wasn’t really until that moment when I got that call and it’s like, this is my job now and now is my chance to make this full time. I’m not going to go get another job, I’m going to put everything I have into this, and I think that was really the best thing that happened to me.”

As for the future, Sauce Leopard will be releasing a cranberry habanero sauce called Bird Blood, inspired by Thanksgiving flavors and crafted to pair well with poultry dishes. Goodwin also plans on expanding the company by producing other products besides hot sauce and getting into stores outside of the state. Another goal that Goodwin would eventually like to achieve is getting his sauce on Hot Ones, a YouTube web series in which celebrities are interviewed as they indulge in spicy chicken wings.

Wild Green Hot Sauce

Pick green or red and spice up a dish with Wild Green’s jalapeno sauces. The flavor-packing jalapeno green contains garlic powder, salt, onion powder and vinegar to balance out the heat from the jalapeno and habanero peppers. What really sets it apart from other sauces is the whiskey barrel-smoked black pepper that adds a layer of aged-wood taste. The jalapeno red offers the same ingredients except it uses red jalapenos instead of green. This minor tweak creates a totally different taste that is silkier and smoother than its green counterpart. Some people might be illuded by the calm spice, but the red jalapeno’s heat will build slowly.

Merfs Condiments

Since she was 8 years old, Kelly Schexnaildre has had a passion for cooking. However, it wasn’t until the summer of 2012, when a friend gifted her a half-bushel of peaches, that she discovered her true calling: making condiments that will enhance any dish. She used the fruit to make a peach habanero hot sauce that became instantly popular among friends and family. Now Merfs Condiments is here to stay.

The original peach and habanero hot sauce that started it all has now been reborn under the name Peaches & Scream, and lives up to its name with a 10/10 heat rating. But for those who don’t wish to set their tongues on fire, Merfs Condiments has a variety of other flavors that will spice up a meal without requiring a sprint to the sink to distinguish the flame. One of Merfs’ newest products is Wildfire Whiskey, a collaboration sauce with Branch and Barrel Distillery, which can be purchased at the distillery’s taproom in Centennial or through Merfs online store.

Golden Toad

With barbeque sauces, rubs and hot sauces, Golden Toad has been helping people add flavor to their favorite meals for quite some time. Since 2004, the family-owned business has been committed to using the freshest ingredients and has been recognized as an award-winning professional-competition BBQ team as a result. Golden Toad’s rubs include Cajun/Creole, Competition BBQ Rub and the Prime Steak Rub. As for the hot sauce and BBQ sauce, there’s no wrong choice, just different flavors for different dishes.

RedCamper’s Deliciousness Preserves

Planning a picnic in the park or having friends over for a cheeseboard happy hour? Make sure to purchase one of the small batch preserves that RedCamper produces through its food line called Deliciousness. With flavors like Campfire Apple Rum, Strawberry Limoncello, Desert Blueberry Gin and others, the name Deliciousness is well deserved. Also offered is the Cherry Fig Mostarda, as well as cocktail cherries. The company is proud to collaborate with local producers for its boozy ingredients and has built relationships with local farmers, most notably First Fruits on the Western Slope, which provides Deliciousness with organic fruit for its peach, apple and pear flavors.

Jay McKinney is a Colorado native who recently graduated from Metro State University of Denver with a bachelor’s degree in communications. He loves spending time outdoors, playing golf and hiking.