Olives & Gin!

We begin the Salsa Crusade with Olives and Gin, Nancy's drink of choice as of lately. 

The ingredient list reads : White vinegar, Tomato, Jalapeno pepper, Onion, Black olives, Green olives, White sugar, Gin, Garlic, Canola oil, Parsley, Xanthum gum, Salt, Red pepper, Cumin, Cilantro.  

I bought it to have as an appetizer to my mushroom soup, and had it with Guiltless Gourmet Blue Corn Chips.  Now that you know all the details, let's review.

Appearance – Brown and murky, and it looks thick and saucy. You can distinguish different vegetables, which is definitely a plus, but there is this backbone of pale, tan goop that is distracting.  This salsa uses xanthum gum, which makes it a little thicker.  Appearance wise, I think that works against it.  It gets a 2.1/5 

Smell – It had a lovely tang to it, which I really appreciated.  I could not smell any juniper though, which I really, really wanted.  However, the smell was nice, olive-y and sour, but still very fresh-smelling.  The appetizing smell more than made up for the murky appearance.  4/5

Alcohol – Well, this is difficult to gauge.  No, I did not taste gin.  But there was a strong undercurrent of almost implacable flavor.  It had a sour-y essence without being necessarily “sour” and a hint of sweetness without being sweet.  The first ingredient listed is plain ol’ white vinegar, so my guess is that the addition of vinegar to the classic brine-and-gin combination brings out a lovely base flavor that highlights the salsa.  The sugar highlighted a natural sweetness in the gin; I can’t believe I don’t put gin in more of my cupcakes.  So, anyway, no, I did not get a huge kick of the alcoholic flavor.  But there was definitely something *there*, which can be attributed to the gin.  Still, I would have loved to know I was consuming alcoholic based on the flavor and not my previous understanding.  So, it is downgraded to 3.5/5.

 I would like more of this.  All of the time, but also, in this salsa.

Flavor – It was a really good salsa, guys.  It was a really fucking yummy salsa.   The chunks of vegetables and olives had their own distinct flavors – the black and the green olives didn’t just mesh together into one taste, but maintained their individual shape and flavors.  I cannot believe I have not found a salsa before this that includes green olives, but it is an absolute revelation.  All the flavors worked lovely together.  4.5/5

Heat – This was probably a perfect heat for a salsa.  I also really love that the jalapeno peppers maintained individual chunks, as opposed to being pulverized like garlic.  I knew when I was biting into a particularly spicy bite.  And it was lovely that the spice build – every bite you got something sweet and brine-y and sour in the beginning, with a lot of full flavors, but it followed by very spicy kick.  The spice gave you time to enjoy the other flavors, which were powerful enough to rival the heat, but it was still hella spicy.  All of this may sound disgusting, but it all worked together perfectly.  5/5

Overall experience - Yowza, what a fucking good salsa.  The Boozy Salsa crusade started off with a kick.  Honestly, there was nothing wrong with my salsa experience.  I could have eaten this salsa for hours.  The appearance stopped bothering me pretty quick.  5/5 for overall experience. 

With a 3.6 of average components (damn you, appearance and lack of juniper flavor!), and an overall experience of 8, that brings the rating up to 8.6.  Whoa.  If this was pizza, it would be the best pizza in Portland.  Let's see how the other salsas measure up.  Clearly, you are on the edge of your seat about this.