Wajos Sugo Mediterraneo. Tomatoes, olives, capers, and white wine, mild and savory – the pasta sauce with nine ingredients that is on the table in eight minutes.

Wajos Sugo Mediterraneo is a pasta sauce made from tomatoes, olive oil, olives, white wine, capers, onions, garlic, sugar, and salt – that is the entire list – 300g in a jar from Dohr on the Moselle. No tomato paste, no sauce with cream or cheese, not a spicy sugo, but a mild, slightly savory tomato sauce that just needs to be heated.

Sugo Mediterraneo from Wajos is made for Tuesday evenings when everyone is hungry and nobody feels like spending an hour at the stove. Put on the pasta water, place the jar in a small pot, and while the pasta cooks, the sauce warms up – one that tastes like tomato, olive, and caper instead of instant soup. The ingredient list is the reason we stock it: nine ingredients, all known from one's own kitchen – starch, flavor additives, and preservatives are absent. Very few ready-made sauces on the shelf have such a short list.

Tomato up front, olive and caper as salty accents, white wine in the background

The sauce is tomato-red, and first you taste the tomato, sweet and fruity, then the olives and capers, which provide the salty, slightly tart tone that makes a sugo Mediterranean. Onion and garlic form the base, the white wine provides a fine acidity and depth that remains when heated. It is mild – chili and pepper are absent from the list – and with 5.4 grams of sugar per 100 grams, it is more savory than sweet. Sugar is only in seventh place, salt is at 1.3 grams. For those expecting a spicy sugo, the Mediterraneo variety is not suitable – in that case, reach for the Sugo all'Arrabbiata.

With pasta, on pizza, with antipasti, and with fish from the oven

The jar is enough for 250 grams of pasta, so for two to three people. Warm the sauce in a pan, add the noodles directly, add a splash of pasta water, stir, and top with Parmesan. If you want more, sauté ground meat or zucchini cubes beforehand and pour the sauce over them. On pizza dough, it replaces the tomato sauce, with an extra touch of olive. It is the side dish that saves the plate when served with grilled fish or chicken from the oven, and cold on toasted bread, it makes a bruschetta without the need for chopping. The sugo is not suitable for those who want a cream sauce or a sauce with cheese – the list is entirely plant-based.

Our tip: The sugo with heart-shaped pasta and a few drops of basil olive oil – the dinner that is popular in our house because the children like the pasta and the parents like the sauce.

Italian in taste, produced by a manufactory on the Moselle

The sugo belongs to the pasta line from Wajos in Dohr near Cochem on the Moselle, a family business with over 80 employees that carries about 900 items and tests its products in its own laboratory. The business comes from viticulture: Walter Josef Oster, namesake and offspring of a winemaking family from Ediger-Eller with 15 generations of history, founded a liqueur manufactory in the 1980s; his son Peter and Ulf Schwichtenberg turned it into the Wajos brand starting in the 2000s. That there is white wine in this sugo fits a house that grew up with wine.

The jar for pasta families, the pantry, and the vacation home

The Sugo Mediterraneo is for everyone who cooks pasta two or three times a week and wants a sauce with an ingredient list you can read aloud. In the pantry, the jar lasts a long time if kept away from light, and once opened, it keeps for a few days in the refrigerator. As a gift, it fits into a pasta package with Confetti Linguine; all sugos and pasta can be found on our Wajos page. It is not suitable for those who find olives and capers too tart – here, they are the second voice behind the tomato.

Tomato, olive, caper, and white wine, nine ingredients in a jar – the sugo from the Moselle that saves our Tuesday evening.