Italy is one of the most important producers of chilli pepper in the world, thanks to many companies that are able to select the most suitable varieties to a long-life of product. Italian chilli pepper is characterized by a lower spiciness, but an unsurpassable supremacy because of its scent and flavour. A delicate and aromatic mix, whose strength does not conceal its pleasantness. The spiciest chilli pepper is cultivated in Calabria, mainly in the Ionian area.
Going along Italy northward, spiciness sweetens up to Tuscany, where we find one of the most important organic productions in the world, la Peperita, an agricultural company in the heart of Tuscany, near Bolgheri, in the municipality of Bibbona, province of Livorno. It is active in the plains of Northern Maremma, a few minutes from the coast of Tyrrhenian Sea, where it benefits by a warm temperate climate for a long time during the year. In this land, organic agriculture grew a lot, with an important net of entrepreneurs who developed farm holidays, too, so that they propose their products, especially fruit and vegetable, wine, and oils, to their guests, who are pleased of tasting them. La Peperita develops its valuable production on 6 hectares, a part of which are in the farm ‘I Doccioni’. The cultivation with an organic and biodynamic method received a certified acknowledgement by CCPB and DEMETER, the top certification agencies in Europe. This certification was strongly wished by Rita Salvadori, a famous Italian artist who divides her time between her paintings, exposed in different art galleries, and love for her land and organic productions.
The company and its history
Rita Salvadori’s company, besides fields of chilli pepper, produces vegetables, olive oil, and fruit. All the products are prepared in the processing workshop, within a typically Tuscan farmhouse restored with a traditional spirit, with bioarchitectural materials and techniques. The production of chilli pepper was a solitary, but winning agricultural adventure, that followed a production of very high quality extra-virgin olive oil for three generations. Everything just began with the production of Tuscan extra-virgin olive oil spiced with chilli pepper, that allowed to let know this organic chilli pepper, cultivated between sea and hill.
Everything began with 600 chilli pepper planted plants. After picking and transforming them, it became evident that it was absolutely necessary to produce by themselves the ingredients that it was necessary to use for the Peperita products. The following evolution was unavoidable: at present, more than 25.000 plants are cultivated with an organic/biodynamic method. For 90% they derive from seeds of the same cultivation. The remaining part concerns plants that are used either for creating other products or assess special cultivations, or they come from gifts offered by ‘friends of chilli pepper’, who when travel all over the world remember Rita Salvadori.
Artistic packages
All the productions feel the effects of their grower’s artistic vein, with their packaging that presents in an elegant and refined way both the simple hot pepper powder and such products as pastes, chocolate, and jam. These packagings are memorable thanks to their shape, graphics, and, of course, contents, always guaranteed without sugars, preservatives, aromas. The oil spiced with chilli pepper continues to be the most appreciated product, but the fresh minced products are the new offers that are winning the traditional market. This product keeps more glamour and flavour in cooking in comparison with the traditional minced chilli pepper. In its rich on-line catalogue, the company did not forget to make the spiciness degree of its productions very varied.
