When the news broke that a Trinidadian pepper is now ranked as the world’s hottest pepper, it raised a burning question. Why was Australia being named as the place of origin of the Trinidadian Scorpion Butch T? The local Scorpion emerged as an even hotter honcho than the English Naga Viper, ousting it from the Guinness World Records as of March 2011.
Fortunately, the Scorpion’s name features its homeland because this is a blistering business when it comes to marketing origins, and already heat has been turned up as its Trinidadian roots are not being touted in its international ranking.
The Guinness World Records lists it as a pepper grown in Australia by The Chilli Factory, who named it the Butch T, after an American, Butch Taylor, owner of Zydeco Hot Sauce. Taylor had passed out some of the seeds and they ended up in the gloved hands of the Chilli Factory Owners.
The pepper is indisputably of Trinidadian origin, as even its name reflects, but it needs to be more aggressively claimed or its commercial potentials may be diminished.
A local chemist, Dr Rosalie Holder, was actually the one to begin measuring the Scorpion’s incendiary qualities from as far back as 1998. While she was doing research for her PhD at The UWI, visiting farmers and checking out their pepper yields, she was presented with some Scorpions by Lawrence Constantine ...more>>
Article by: Vaneisa Baksh, Editor, UWI Today |
