A locally made hot sauce has been ranked the third hottest in an annual competition featuring best of the best sauces from Australia and New Zealand.

Paul’s Raro Hot Sauce was placed third in the super-hot category – Carolina Reaper Heat 10+ - at the Australian Mr Chilli Awards announced on Tuesday last week.

Last year, in the Medium Heat 5+ category, Paul’s Raro Hot Sauce placed second with “Raro Lava” sauce and in the Fruit Mild section, the “Shrekalicious” sauce came in a respectable fourth place.

However, the Cook Islands hot sauce did not make the cut in the main super-hot category.

This year, owner of the enterprise, Paul Lynch (Napa) said he sent two of his hot sauces and one of them – the newly launched “Burnin’ Love” sauce – was for the super-hot 10+ heat level category.

“Last year I sent the “Core” hot sauce made out of scorpion and ghost chillies with 1 million Scoville Heat Units (SHU) but it didn’t get the rating as super-hot,” Lynch said.

“This year I grew the hottest chilli in the world, the Carolina Reaper, which has a heat level of 2.2 million SHU. I grew enough to do one small batch of hot sauce and I got a bottle hand delivered to Perth, Australia, where the judge is based.”

The southern bourbon and cola flavoured “Burnin’ Love” hot sauce is also Lynch’s tribute to his idol Elvis Presley. He is an Elvis Presley impersonator and tribute artist.

Lynch said there were 15 entries in this category and Paul’s Raro Hot Sauce was honoured to be ranked third and above some of the well-known brands.

“They started announcing the winners from third place and I freaked out when Paul’s Raro Hot Sauce was announced at third place,” he said.

All 150 bottles of “Burnin’ Love” hot sauce from the first batch have sold out, and Lynch is working on his second batch.

“The chillies are growing much better.”

Paul’s Raro Hot Sauce produces and sells nine flavours with different heat levels meant for different food.

Lynch will be promoting his product at the New Zealand Hot Sauce Festival to be held in Auckland on Friday (Cook Islands time).