Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 15, 1990 TAG: 9007130398
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
For Bill "Hootie" Wright, it's a tossup.
"I couldn't decide which one I liked the best," he said recently in the country kitchen of his Montgomery County home.
So Wright did what any normal, enterprising barbecue-lover would do: he mixed them together.
The result is Hootie's Barbecue Sauce, and you can find a half-bottle or two in the Wrights' refrigerator any season of the year.
You'll find the other half of the bottlepoured over a slab of pork (or chicken or beef). And you'll find the pork (or chicken or beef) cooking on one of the Wrights' four grills.
"We cook this way all year round," said Sandy Wright, holding out a plate of pork tenderloin. "We even cook our Thanksgiving turkey out there."
Sans sauce, however.
Right now, the Wrights' home is the only shop in town that keeps Hootie's in stock. But by the middle or end of July, the sauce will be in gourmet shops and independent grocery stores all over the New River Valley.
"Finding people to sell it wasn't much of a problem," Sandy Wright said. "Some of the people were even asking us."
Marketing the sauce is something the Wrights have thought about for a long time.
"We just never got around to doing it," Bill Wright said.
But as friends kept finding more uses for the sauce, the Wrights kept finding more reasons to market it.
"People love it on fish and scrambled eggs. The latest thing is some people from Floyd mixed it with olive oil and used it for salad dressing," Sandy Wright said.
Some folks even drink it.
"I've got one friend who says the sauce is best served when it's added to a Bloody Mary mix," Bill Wright said.
Jack McCraw, who lives at Claytor Lake, said he sticks to using it on meats himself - any meat he cooks. "I guess I've been eating it since Bill started making it," said McCraw, who has known Wright for 20 years. "That sauce has got some loyal fans."
Early this year, the Wrights took the sauce to be analyzed by Virginia Tech's food science department. And things started coming together.
They found the bottles from a dealer in Richmond. They found a friend to design the label.
They found a name.
"It was always going to be `Hootie's something . . . '," said Bill Wright, who was dubbed "Hootie" when he was growing up in Radford.
Why "Hootie?"
"Let's just say it goes back a long way and leave it at that," he said, shaking his head.
And don't ask Wright for his recipe, either - he's not telling any more than the label, which gets a little vague at the end.
"Ingredients include vinegar, honey, tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, pepper and other spices," the label reads.
Cooking has always been a hobby for the Wrights. They hope eventually to build a small inn overlooking Little River on their 40 acres between Radford and Snowville.
"Just something with a quiet country setting," Bill Wright said. "Three rooms at the most."
But the Wrights have no intention of making the inn - or the cooking or the sauce - any more than a hobby. Bill will keep his job at Radford Army Ammunition Plant, where he is a construction technician for the Army Corps of Engineers, and Sandy will continue to work as a Realtor for Owens and Co.
In between, they'll make and market the sauce, which runs $2.50 for a 12 oz. bottle.
Sandy Wright said she wants to have a new batch made up and in the stores in time for barbecue season.
But if, for some reason, the bottles don't make it to the stores right away, there's a strong possibility you'll find a bottle or 12 at the Wrights' house.
Need to get hold of some?
Call 731-HOOT.
by CNB