a sauceGeorge's Barbecue Sauce

A bottled sauce from Nashville, North Carolina, a Nash County town on the edge of the Coastal Plain, sold in three strengths: Original, Hot and Special. The Original's label reads vinegar, water, tomato concentrate, tomato paste, sugar, apples, salt, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, red pepper and spices — vinegar leading, tomato third and fourth, and a sweetening that runs to three separate entries. It carries 3.5 grams of sugar in a tablespoon and 180 milligrams of sodium. The Special reverses the first four: tomato concentrate and tomato paste come before the water and the vinegar, and jalapenos join the list.

The company dates itself to 1975 and names George Stallings as its founder, who worked the recipe out in his outdoor garage; after it caught on at home, he and his brother cooked, bottled and sold it by hand. The maker's own page says the sauces are still made by hand in small batches to that recipe, and that 4,500 bottles a day are poured, packed and shipped by hand from Womble Road in Nashville.

Inference — the label is worth reading against the map. Nashville sits in the eastern half of the state, where the sauce that goes on a chopped hog is vinegar and pepper with no tomato in it. George's pours vinegar first, then puts tomato third — the order of the Piedmont dip, not the Coastal Plain's — and sells it as an eastern-style sauce. A bottle that has to keep on a shelf and please a wide market is not the same object as a sauce mixed in a bucket behind a pit, and the reading here describes the bottle.

Poured over chopped or pulled pork, brushed on chicken and ribs, used as a mop while a shoulder cooks. It is thin enough to soak rather than coat. Three strengths sit beside each other on the same shelf: Original, Hot, and Special, which is the tomato-first one with jalapenos.

Made and shipped from Nashville, North Carolina. The three bottles are sold from the company's site and through eastern North Carolina grocers.