Getting a taste of Albuquerque’s annual fiery foods show

I plop a tiny bit on my tongue. The burn is instant, yet not a debilitating shock to my New Mexico chile–battered palette. But moments later, the Pepper X takes its diabolical root and the intensity ramps way up to sweaty, eye-watering punishment. I’m choking, kicking the floor, and wondering “Who on Earth finds this fun?” A healthy number of the roughly 20,000 show attendees per year, it turns out.

Light my fire

Dave DeWitt—author, food historian, and so-called “Pope of Peppers”—started “The Hottest Show on Earth” in 1988 with just 47 exhibitors and 500 attendees. Word spread like wildfire among “chileheads,” as pepper fanatics are known. Now it’s said to be the nation’s largest spicy foods trade show, with 135 exhibitors from around the globe. It presents the annual Scovie Awards to spicy food purveyors in 125 categories—from wing sauces to Cajun dry rubs.

DeWitt retired in 2023 and sold the show and its production company, Sunbelt Shows, to his longtime friend and Burn Blog contributor, Mark Masker. I later email Masker to ask about his history with the show, its future, and the current nature of the hot sauce business. Specifically, why are many hot sauce makers trying to murder my taste buds for heat’s sake?

In 2010, Masker rode a curious on-ramp into the spice lane, one that sparked from his barbecue meat-smoking hobby. “I tested my pitmaster skills on a used $20 smoker, but it died soon after,” he says. “I had seen directions in a book on how to build one from a trash can. So after getting all the parts, I busted out the tools and built a smoker, then custom-painted it with a flame job.”

A journalist at the time, Masker submitted a how-to article to DeWitt, who ran it on his website. Masker soon expanded his smoked-meat horizons by entering and judging barbecue competitions and writing extensively on the subject. As for hot pepper sauces, Masker says, “I didn’t have much experience with spicy food up to that point. But when I attended my first show in 2011, I got drawn in by the variety and the enthusiasm of everyone involved. Now I grow chiles in my backyard.” 

Make it stop!

At the Taos Hum Hot Sauce–Make It Stop! booth, husband-and-wife owners Joe and Loe Marcoline invite me to visit their organic chile farm northeast of Española to see firsthand how they cultivate a Chocolate Trinidad Moruga Scorpion pepper. It registers 2 million Scoville Heat Units and, as Dirty Harry would say, will “blow your head clean off.”

So on a sunny August morning, I drive up a bumpy dirt road that dips in and out of dry arroyos framed by fluttering cottonwoods to Taos Hum’s off-the-grid Walking Trout Farm, named for a local legend about fish walking across dry land from the Rio Grande to spawn in the farm-adjacent Rio de Truchas. At the barn, I’m met by Joe, Loe, and their excited, tail-wagging rescue dogs.

Joe is easygoing and quick with a joke, yet precise when discussing farming. This meticulousness comes from his professional career as a geohydrologic engineer.

The couple bought the property in 2010 and spent a few years growing vegetables to sell at the Taos Farmers Market. Their first batch of Taos Hum chiles yielded about 500 bottles of sauce. Today, they crank out roughly 50,000 bottles annually, hand-mixed in a Taos commercial kitchen and bottled by Albuquerque’s Apple Canyon Gourmet.

Joe attributes their rapid success to a farm-to-table approach. “We grow 100% of our peppers and make our own vinegar,” he says. “Our non-chile fruits are grown here or on our neighbor’s certified organic farm. We’re trying to make a truly local New Mexico product that’s pepper forward, not all water and vinegar and thickened with xanthan gum.”

Burn, baby, burn

A newbie on the tonsil-torching scene, I get the impression that superhot sauces, produced solely for their “go big or go home” appeal, are simply a fad. Masker explains, “Superhots hit the industry well before the Hot Ones show, and they’ll be around long after. What I have seen trending is producers trying to balance flavor and heat while still using the hottest peppers because they know anyone can pump capsaicin into a sauce. The flavor profile is what makes or breaks a product.”

Recounting my bout with The Last Dab, I ask Masker if there’s any particular sauce at the show that’s made him cry uncle. He recalls sampling blistering Carolina Reaper, scorpion, and ghost pepper sauces at the CaJohn’s booth—on an empty stomach. “I was cool for the first 10 minutes,” he recalls. “Then the heat kicked in for real. What started as a minor abdominal heat got more intense, as if a gigantic toddler was using a magnifying glass to focus sunlight on my tummy.”