Alex Casey delves into the surprising success of the novelty special edition Tuimato sauce – and learns a shocking truth about the ‘Tui girls’.

On paper, Tuimato has absolutely no right to be my tomato sauce of choice. Launched in 2008 as part of Tui Beer’s ever-expanding merchandise range (which also included key rings, towels and the best-selling “Yeah Right” books), it was pitched as a new take on the “Kiwi bloke’s quintessential condiment.” To this day, the label boasts the blokey, boozy tagline “Getting on the sauce since 1889” and purports to still be made by the “the girls” at the Tui brewery. 

But even as a non-bloke, non-drinker and non-sauce-making girl, I have loved Tuimato sauce for over a decade. It has the chunky consistency of a homemade sauce, the kind you might buy in a jar from an old lady at a fair (a retired Tui girl, one can only assume). Tuimato is sweet but not too sweet, with a good amount of tang and a touch of smokiness. The flecks of garlic and onion also make it seem like a normal food and not a product best used to clean taps. 

Why do we never hear about Tuimato? Perhaps because Watties takes up 98% of sauce discourse with “remember when coffee was black or white, instead of latte or mocha at some trendy site” alone, while the other 2% is saved for Chris Hipkins’ sausage roll chat. You hear murmurs from foodies about Heinz, but I have never heard another living soul utter the word “Tuimato” outside of me, pitching this story repeatedly in The Spinoff’s editorial meeting.

A callout for beloved Tuimato memories also got a lukewarm reception. “I think I got it in a gift basket once”, one friend reflected. “I had it when I was flatting with the boys and the boys were like ‘hell yeah, tomato but lads’”, offered another. Many colleagues associated Tuimato with their parents – Boil Up editor Charlotte Muru-Lanning recently discovered that hers had not one but two bottles of Tuimato in their pantry and an open bottle in their fridge. 

“We love it,” her Mum explained. “No other tomato sauce compares!”

As for the recipe itself, Tui lore states that it came from Mrs Wagstaff, wife of brewery founder Henry Wagstaff, aka the First Girl. There’s not a lot more out there on Mrs Wagstaff so I reached out to Tui HQ, but never heard back (the Tui girls probably had too much sauce on their gorgeous fingers to reply). As an award-winning journalist, it was my duty to uncover the truth, so I used my award-winning eyes to read this on the back of the bottle:

“Produced by the good people at Delmaine Fine Foods for the girls at Tui Brewery.” 

The girls, the gorgeous girls, were simply middlemen! Middlegirls! I managed to get a hold of Micheal Bennett, marketing manager at Delmaine Fine Foods, who explained Delmaine had been approached in 2007 by Tui’s then-commercial manager, Nick Rogers, to come up with a new recipe incorporating Tui beer. “The product has always been, and is to this day, made with actual Tui beer from the brewery in Mangatainoka,” Bennett says. 

Although the alcohol content burns off during the cooking process, the novel idea of a sauce made with beer quickly caught on following its test market release in January, 2008. “While it was perhaps seen early on as a bit of a fad product, it soon became a favourite with many Kiwis because of the taste,” Bennett says. In the first year of production, demand was so great that Delmaine had to swap out the 350g glass bottle for a 580g squeezable bottle. 

In 2012, the Tui girls shattered the glass ceiling with a Tui barbecue sauce, called Bar-B-Tui, which remained on shelves until 2020 (there were also plans to make a spicy “Tuibasco” sauce, but that was thwarted by copyright issues). These days 400,000 units of Tuimato are sold every year, making it the third most popular sauce brand in New Zealand behind Watties and Heinz. 

Fifteen years since its creation, Tuimato mastermind Nick Rogers remains “immensely proud” of the success of the sauce. “It was a novelty when people first heard about it, but then they kept coming back because it’s just bloody good tomato sauce.” He no longer works for DB, and says that Tuimato is the only legacy that remains from his time in marketing for the brand. “It’s lasted longer than everything else,” he says. “I never thought it would actually stick around.”

Just like me, he’s heard from many people who still buy the sauce despite, not because of, the branding. “The amount of people who say ‘Oh, I don’t want that, it’s Tui’ and then have it and find out it tastes incredible is massive. It’s just a great sauce.” Now working with the White Swan, the Tui Brewery and the Monteith’s Brewery, Rogers says Tuimato is on the table at all his establishments. You’ll also find it, naturally, in his own fridge at home. 

“I have it every week” he says. “It always tastes just that little bit better than all the other sauces.” 

What’s on the menu when you get your wisdom teeth removed? Charlotte Muru-Lanning recounts 10 days of tedious post-dental-extraction eating.

This is an excerpt from our weekly food newsletter, The Boil Up.

I’ve spent the last 10 days recovering from having my wisdom teeth removed – here’s everything I ate.

Tuesday, day one: 

This was the surgery day, which I’d been dreading since the day I booked it. You can’t eat before general anesthesia, and in the seven waking hours leading up to the operation the urge to snack or chug back a glass of water was almost overwhelming.

While I waited before the surgery I took a photo of a little cartoon in my magazine: a tiny fish with the label “yesterday’s problem”, being eaten by a slightly bigger fish called “today’s problem”, which was about to be munched up by the far bigger fish “tomorrow’s problem”. I thought it was funny in a cute way at the time, but in hindsight perhaps it was some kind of omen.

I was asleep for the surgery and woke up in the operating room feeling like my entire mouth had disappeared, yet was handed an orange-coloured ice block by the nurse. It’s difficult to eat an ice block without a mouth.

Dinner that night was half a can of lukewarm Wattie’s “very special” creamy chicken soup and a lot of pills.

Wednesday, day two:

If you’ve not had teeth removed before, you’d likely be surprised (as I was) at the level of dietary restrictions in the ensuing days and weeks. In the lead-up to the surgery I’d been warned by numerous wisdom teeth buffs of the dreaded “dry socket”. I won’t get into the gory details in a food newsletter but it means that what should form on top of the extraction sites either doesn’t form at all or is dislodged – and I’d been told it was “horrifically painful” and could last for weeks. Beyond just soft food, straws are a no-no (suction is bad), as is rice (or literally any other similar food which can get stuck in the holes), along with spices and acidic food (which can aggravate the site).

In preparation, I’d stocked up on bananas, fancy Greek yoghurt, hummus, sorbet, Angel Delight instant pudding, eggs, instant miso, potatoes (to be mashed) and homemade individually portioned soups – a roasted garlic, a leek and potato and a roasted carrot – which I froze. Four days worth of totally soft food before I’d be able to start introducing a little more variety. I began jotting down and photographing everything I ate.

Thursday, day three:

Another banana smoothie for breakfast, roasted carrot soup for lunch with a side of avocado and mashed potatoes served in a pretty bowl for dinner.

My type-C personality gained some kind of weird satisfaction from being this pre-prepared and thoughtful about the kai I’d eat in recovery – like the Martha Stewart of post-wisdom teeth surgery (Martha Stewart has had her wisdom teeth removed too). I envisaged myself typing up some kind of fun newsletter rundown of the smushy yet imaginative four days’ worth of food, with a title like “the restrictive delights of post-wisdom teeth surgery eating”. I had no inkling of how quickly the novelty would wear off. My lesson, on reflection, is that some things in life can simply not be romanticised.

Friday, day four:

My chipmunk cheeks have subsided significantly, to a size more like that of a quokka. Another banana smoothie, roasted garlic soup and a lukewarm tea for lunch; an extremely soft macaroni and cheese which I eat without chewing and a glass of Thai milk tea for dinner. Lots of antibiotics and pain medication.

Saturday, day five:

This is the day I’m meant to start feeling better, and yet I wake up in hell – despite being on some pretty gnarly painkillers. To take my mind off the radiating, throbbing agony, and in need of a change of scenery, I take a trip to one of my favourite places, the supermarket, to buy feta cheese, smoked salmon and a can of whipped chocolate mousse.

In the evening, I craft a grazing plate of smoked salmon, mashed avocado and soup with feta cheese. For dessert, chocolate mousse from the can. I can barely speak.

Sunday, day six:

Today I can only manage a deeply unaesthetic bowl of mashed banana with some yoghurt to eat with my medication before my dad drives me to A&E – my dental surgeon reckons I have the dreaded dry socket.

There’s a tangential link between food and the issue of universal free dental care, not just because our teeth are so important when it comes to our enjoyment of food, but also because arguments against such policies often involve the idea that money would be better spent on prevention through education around sugary foods and drinks. Prevention is important but it would be remiss of me not to note how prohibitively expensive this has all been – and my eating habits haven’t had any influence. Thankfully, I have insurance which has covered most of the cost, but without it, so far it would have cost me $5,550 plus a $75 trip to White Cross, and $35 in prescriptions (dental prescriptions aren’t subsidised under the new scheme).

Monday, day seven:

I head back to the surgeon in the morning, who confirms not just one but two dry sockets, along with some other issues. Another day of pain and nausea. To take my mind off all that I consume a media diet of videos from Koroneihana, Trinny Woodhall styling tips, and Desperate Housewives. For dinner my boyfriend makes me a silly haute cuisine-esque plate of salmon, spinach puree and a quenelle of mashed potato.

Tuesday, day eight:

Being on a mix of painkillers and antibiotics non-stop for over a week does some weird things to your body. Especially your brain (which feels like a sieve) and perhaps even more so to your tummy. I’ve lost 4kg, my face looks wan (as Trinny Woodhall would say), I feel ridiculously feeble, and I still can’t speak.

Wednesday, day nine:

The Nutribullet has been both friend and foe over the last week and a bit. I have no idea what I’d have done without it, but I’m also so sick of the mush it makes. Even with the nausea, I’ve had cravings for particular food, or more specifically food textures. I’ve found myself daydreaming about the suspenseful slurp of drinking boba tea, the chew of chicken gizzards, the concentrated, almost intimate experience of eating whole prawns and mussels, the alternating textures as you bite through a burger, the gulping of chongqing noodles, the variating crunchiness of Cheds, popcorn and radishes and the dry crumb of vanilla birthday cake.

Thursday, day 10:

The ceaseless sloppiness of food during this period has driven me to a heightened awareness and I’ve ended up delving into the brain chemistry behind the sensations of food textures. There are evolutionary reasons for why we enjoy or dislike particular textures, and in 2014, a “sonic chip” experiment showed that chips which are louder to eat taste better. As someone whose happiness is largely reliant on what I eat, learning the extent to which texture, not just taste, drives positive brain responses to food has been enlightening – if not slightly frustrating when I can’t do anything about it. For now at least, back to my mush.