Hollister – San Benito County has become the only area producing
the seeds of a hybrid red chile pepper that’s quickly gaining
popularity for its unique sweet-hot flavor and unusual strawberry
shape.
Hollister – San Benito County has become the only area producing the seeds of a hybrid red chile pepper that’s quickly gaining popularity for its unique sweet-hot flavor and unusual strawberry shape.
The cherrapeño pepper, named “Sparky” by Hollister’s Orsetti Seed Company, which bought the rights to the pepper five years ago, is a cross between the jalapeño and the cherry pepper. It has been a hit with master gardeners since it was first developed in the Hollister area around the same time as its purchase by Orsetti, according to Jim Maley of the Santa Clara Master Gardeners.
“This chile is very, very popular with the master gardeners, and has been for at least five or six years,” said Maley. “This one seemed to stand out from all the other peppers, it seemed to catch everyone’s fancy.”
Now, he said, Sparky’s popularity is slowly beginning to spread to other parts of the country, finding its way into jams and salsas in which its parent peppers just don’t do the trick.
“People started making hot pepper jam out of this one, and it turns out that it made a more flavorful, more robust jam than the cherry bomb or even the jalapeño,” said Maley. “They put it on a slab of cream cheese and eat it with crackers, and the cream cheese is really a wonderful way to mitigate some of the heat. There’s a lot of heat in the chile to begin with; it’s just a shade less than the jalapeño. But there’s a lot of sugar to begin with, and they add sugar. It really has become quite popular.”
And the market of growers is expanding outside of the small circle of master gardeners to include backyard gardeners and novices, according to Greg Orsetti of Orsetti Seed.
“The home-gardeners have really taken to this variety because of the flavor. It’s initially sweet, but then it’s followed up by a blast of heat,” Orsetti said. “The most exposure we’ve had with it is from master gardeners, but we get contacted all the time regarding it. We’re a wholesale seed company so we sell through dealers, and it did well last year. There was a void I guess in the cherry-types (of peppers), so a lot of people switched into it.”
The Santa Clara Master Gardeners, who hold a huge plant sale every year, have also been seeing an increased regional demand for the hybrid pepper, Maley said.
“People are picking up on it through our plant sales and the tastings we hold. We’ll have a big onslaught of people that will actually ask for it. We’ll actually sell that variety out,” he said. “They’re getting it through word of mouth. I would say right now it’s local to the greater Santa Clara Valley, but there are chiles like that, that they become regional and people hear about them and they get to other places. So we’re hoping word will get out.”
Jessica Quandt covers politics for the Free Lance. Reach her at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or at [email protected].
