Catbird Seat
Catbird Seat
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Catbird Seat
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Pl. II · Gallus felis fumida
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Smoked Guajillo & Black Garlic · Batch 001

Catbird Seat Smoky

Fermented six weeks · pH verified on every batch

Guajillo smoked over hickory, charred onion, black garlic and cider vinegar. It tastes like the good part of a barbecue, and then it bites.

Heat
5/10

Warm and building. Comfortable for most people, noticeably present by the third bite.

Vinegar
Sweet

Hickory | Sun-dried Tomato | Black Garlic | Toasted Cumin

Choose your specimen

1

Free shipping over $35 · Ships in 1–2 business days · Tennessee delivery only

Take all three — save $6

The Full Litter, boxed. $36 instead of $42.

Smoked guajillo, apple cider vinegar, charred onion, black garlic, tomato, sea salt, molasses, cumin.

That is the whole list. Nothing thickened, nothing coloured, no capsaicin extract, no "natural flavors." 5 fl oz (148 mL).

Carnitas tacos · Pizza · Bloody Mary · Brisket · Black beans

Shake hard — there are no stabilizers in here, so separation is normal and correct. Refrigerate after opening; it will hold six months, but it won't last that long.

Peppers go into a 2.5% brine and ferment for six to eight weeks before anything else happens. Then aromatics, vinegar, and acid correction to a verified equilibrium pH, checked against our scheduled process on every single run. Hot-filled, capped, banded, lot-coded.

Batch 001 · pH 3.42 · Bottled 14 March 2026 · 1,000 bottles

Flat $6 shipping, free over $35. Orders go out within two business days. Glass ships in molded pulp — if it arrives broken, send a photo and we will replace it. No return needed, keep the pieces away from the dog.

We ship within Tennessee only. We make this in a home kitchen under the Tennessee Food Freedom Act, and that exemption stops at the state line. Out-of-state shipping arrives when we do.

Section II

Where it earns
its shelf space.

01

Carnitas tacos

Smoke on smoke. The cider vinegar cuts straight through the fat.

02

Cheese pizza

After the bake, never before. Heat kills the black garlic.

03

Bloody Mary

Two dashes, then one more. Replaces both the hot sauce and the Worcestershire.

04

Brisket

Thin it with a spoonful of the drippings and treat it as a finishing sauce.

05

Black beans

Stir in at the end. Does the work of a whole sofrito.

06

Fried chicken

This is not a hard question.

Section III

Three things
doing the work.

i

Guajillo

Dried, then cold-smoked over hickory in Middle Tennessee rather than bought pre-smoked. Guajillo is mild on its own — it is here for the dried-berry sweetness underneath the smoke, not the heat.

ii

Black garlic

Whole heads held at low heat for three weeks until the cloves go soft, dark and molasses-sweet. It is the reason this sauce reads as savoury rather than sharp.

iii

Cider vinegar

Unfiltered, from apples, not distilled. More expensive and more acidic-tasting than white vinegar, and it is what keeps a smoked sauce from turning muddy.

Section IV

Taste it before
you trust us.

01 — Find the table

We're at Nashville markets most weekends with all three, unlabelled, poured cold. Three cups, no context, no sales pitch.

02 — Tell us which one

A card and one question: which would you actually buy? Your answer decides how much of Batch 001 each sauce gets.

03 — Get first claim

Leave an email and a bottle is held for you when the batch is bottled, with a founding-batch lot number on it.

04 — Read the numbers

Ferment length, equilibrium pH, bottling date, batch size. Ask and we'll send the log. We think that's the interesting part.

No reviews here yet — Batch 001 hasn't shipped. When it has, these will be real ones.