Charapita peppers

Charapitas are small round yellow peppers about the size of a pea. They are indigenous to the Amazon rainforest and grow in Peru,Bolivia, and Colombia. These areas are considered to be the primary centers of diversity of all peppers and Peru is the birth place of all chilis. For this reason, charapitas are nicknamed "the mother of all chilis".  Harvesting so many of the small peppers by hand is extremely labor intensive and for this reason the pepper is very hard to find commercially.  The charapita is reportedly the most expensive pepper in the world, with the lowest price being at least 5 times that of other high end peppers. 

      Brent first encountered charapitas while on the Amazon River in Peru on a 3  day boat trip to Iquitos, one of the largest cities in the world that is only accessible by air or boat. The boat would stop in little towns and enterprising kids would get on selling old soda bottles filled with charapitas that they had collected. Upon discovering that the small yellow balls in the bottles were chili peppers, he naturally purchased a bottle and was blown away by the spicy, tropical citrus flavor.  He and his brother minced them with a pocket knife, poured vinegar over them and enjoyed adding their concoction to food for the rest of the trip.

      Upon returning home, Brent searched for seeds and although hard to find, he eventually found an eccentric seller named the Chile Woman in Bloomington that sold plants. A friend brought one up to Fort Wayne and he has kept that strain alive through several generations since 2016, increasing the number of plants each year. On a recent trip to the Colombian Amazon in 2023, Brent found a few other varieties of Charapita including the Charapon(which is larger and the size of a cherry) and was able to bring back seeds and start new plants. He is looking forward to keeping these going and plans on coming out with new hot sauce flavors soon!