Vic Clinco has probably one of the world's largest private collections of hot chilli sauce. Having collected bottle's ever since his wife bought him 12 bottles as a Christmas gift back in 1996, the growing collection now consists of nearly 6000 bottles:

In his collection is an extremely rare pair of 'Adam and Eve' sauces from CaJohn’s Fiery Foods and one of his 'prized additions' is two bottles of Blair’s Calderas (caldera means volcanic cauldron) that are incredibly hard to find. Blair’s also makes the Guinness World Record-certified hottest sauce on the planet – the Caldera 16 Mil. This is short for 16 million Scoville units. Scoville units measure the pungency and spiciness of chilli peppers. And of course Vic managed to get his hands on a bottle. Apparently there are only 499 bottles in existence and on specialist hot sauce websites, a bottle sells for almost £3,000.

Vic said: “To put how hot that is in perspective, 11 million Scoville units is hotter than most police pepper sprays in the States – they mostly range from between 2 Mil and 9 Mil. “It is actually not even a true sauce, it’s in crystallised form, pretty darn cool.

Vic says this his most expensive bottle is worth about $900 (£580) – a one-of-a-kind – and the most he has ever paid for a bottle is $400 (£260). [...]

Image credit: Barcroft Media