Wajos Peach Sauce with Whisky. One-fifth peach purée, honey, onions and 6 percent whisky – the sweet and tangy barbecue sauce for pork, chicken and halloumi.
Wajos Peach Sauce with Whisky is a barbecue sauce made from 20 percent peach purée, honey, tomato paste, 6 percent whisky, onions, brandy vinegar and spices, with a smoky flavour, 245 ml from Dohr on the Moselle. It’s not ketchup, not a chutney for eating by the spoonful, and not a spice bomb, but a thick sauce for dipping and glazing – sweet at first, then sour and tangy.
Peach Sauce with Whisky from Wajos is the bottle that sits on our garden table next to the grill in summer – it’s a favourite of ours, usually ordered in May and June. The evening looks like this: pork neck steaks off the grill, corn on the cob, a salad, and the sauce in the middle for everyone to take turns dipping into. The kids love it for the sweetness, the adults for the onion, the smoke and the whisky, which tastes less like a glass of whisky and more like a sauce with character. By the end of the evening, the bottle is half empty, and no one has missed the ketchup.
Sweet like ripe peach, then onion, smoke and a hint of whisky
Bound with locust bean gum, the sauce stays on the meat instead of running off. At first, you taste peach and honey, soft and well-rounded. Then comes the savoury layer: onions, tomato paste, garlic, and a hint of smoke from smoke flavouring. The brandy vinegar keeps the sweetness in check, and right at the finish sits the whisky – six percent, enough for a warm, slightly malty depth, while the alcohol itself remains in the background. The spices add a mild heat that lingers on the tongue while remaining gentle.
The sauce is sweet, you should know: nearly 50 grams of sugar per 100 millilitres, derived from sugar, honey, peach and beet syrup. Because it contains honey, it is not suitable for vegans. If you want a hot, smoky barbecue sauce, you are better served by the Barbecue Sauce with Hickory Smoked Salt. And if you generally avoid fruit on meat, this probably won't be for you.
For dipping, glazing and in the pan with onions
The simplest way to use it is as a dip: pork neck steak, bratwurst, chicken skewers or halloumi from the grill, with the sauce on the side. It goes with anything that has fat and roasted aromas because its sweetness and acidity hold their own against them. It is the substitute for ketchup that kids immediately accept with chips and potato wedges.
For glazing, it goes onto the meat in the last five minutes: brush chicken legs, spare ribs or pork belly and put them back on the grill for a short time. That’s it – the sugar caramelises quickly and becomes bitter if it is left directly over the embers for too long.
In the kitchen, it works as a base for a quick pan sauce: sauté onions in butter, add two tablespoons of sauce, deglaze with a little broth, and serve with pork fillet or chicken breast. Stirred into minced meat for burgers, it adds juiciness and sweetness. On a burger with bacon and cheddar, it replaces the barbecue sauce, with significantly more fruit. And in a marinade with oil and soy sauce, it makes chicken wings sticky and dark.
It is not suitable for fish with a delicate flavour, for beef steak you want to eat plain, or for anything that needs to cook for a long time. Once opened, the bottle belongs in the fridge.
Our tip: Pork neck steaks from the grill, brushed with the sauce in the last few minutes, served with baked potatoes seasoned with the One For All Rub – the Sunday for which we buy this bottle.
Cooked in Dohr, by a business that started with liqueur
That a business on the Moselle puts whisky in a barbecue sauce is less surprising if you know where Wajos comes from. The name stands for Walter Josef Oster, founder of a wine-growing family in Ediger-Eller that has been making wine for 15 generations. In the 1980s, Walter Oster opened a liqueur manufactory next to the vineyard – spirits were the craft from the beginning, long before cremas, oils and sauces were added.
His son Peter Oster and Ulf Schwichtenberg built the Wajos brand from the 2000s onwards, opening the first store in Trier in 2008, and today they have stores all over Germany. The company is based in Dohr near Cochem, employs over 80 people and manufactures most of its approximately 900 items itself. Every sauce goes through their own laboratory before it ends up in the bottle.
The barbecue sauces at Wajos are among the products where the company plays to its origins: fruit that you know from their cremas, and alcohol that you know from their liqueurs, brought together in one sauce. "Work in a controlled, smaller way" is what the family business calls its principle – better a few sauces that get it right than a shelf full of variations.
The sauce for the barbecue summer and for anyone who finds ketchup too boring
The Peach Sauce is the bottle you buy when you’ve had enough of the standard barbecue sauces and want something fruity on the table. It is the mild, sweet variety on the Wajos shelf – for families where children are eating, and for guests who find spice too much. If you want more fire afterwards, you will find the hot fruitiness in the Mango Paprika Sauce with Jalapeno Chilli and a dark, savoury direction in the Balsamic Roasted Onion Sauce. All sauces are available on our Wajos page.
As a gift, it is the souvenir for a barbecue evening that looks like more than just a token gift – combined with a rub, it becomes a small barbecue kit. Unopened, it keeps for a long time in the pantry; once opened, it lasts for a few weeks in the fridge. It is not suitable for anyone who wants to avoid alcohol completely: at six percent, the whisky is a genuine ingredient rather than just a trace.
Peach, honey, onion and a splash of whisky – the barbecue sauce from the Moselle that everyone takes turns dipping into on a summer evening.
