You guys are so easily influenced by marketing. With Cholula, you're paying for the fancy wooden cap and "fake" Mexican brand. If you're looking for authentic Mexican hot sauce, buy Valentina which is made by company actually based in Mexico and charges what the hot sauce is worth, which is about $1. Valentina is good because it's unpretentious real Mexican hot sauce that's priced right. You have to be dumb to pay $4 for flavored water.
As with many things in life, simple is best.
Crystal hot sauce ingredients: aged red cayenne peppers, distilled white vinegar, and salt.
Louisiana Hot Sauce ingredients: aged long cayenne peppers, vinegar, and salt.
Notice the trend? 3 simple ingredients. Aged red peppers, vinegar, and salt. No preservatives. No thickening agent. No BS. Just simple ingredients done right and sold at very reasonable price. ~$1 per bottle. These two are proper hot sauce and made in Louisiana.
Now, let's look at the ingredients for Cholula.
water, peppers (arbol and pequin), salt, vinegar, garlic powder, spices, and xanthan gum.
Notice the first ingredient? Water. Notice the last ingredient? Xanthan gum. Ingredients are always listed from most to least. Why do they need to add so much water when vinegar contains water along with red pepper? They add that shit to dilute the crap out of the sauce and then add xanthan gum as thickening agent to thicken the sauce and bind the ingredients together. They wouldn't need xanthan gum if they didn't add so much water. But when your main ingredient is water, you need some type of thickening agent and preservative.
So when you buy Cholula, you're paying for flavored water. $4 flavored water with fancy wooden cap that's owned by US company that used to have its headquarter in New York. Meanwhile you can buy Valentina which is similar flavored water for $1 in simple packaging that's owned by Mexican company based in Mexico if you want real Mexican hot sauce.