Me love mi Pickapeppa

Pickapeppa sauce is as much about Jamaica as reggae music and "Yea man!" This family owned business, which started in 1921, still makes what is for me the best sauce in the world (see company website). They have also the best pepper sauce. About six other products are now on the line, including three varieties of mango sauces. About 90-95 percent of the products are exported, mainly to North America, the UK and central America.

The Pickapeppa company developed after Joseph Lyn Kee Chow, whose parents were from China, bought the rights for a recipe from a friend, Norman Nash, who had been "brewing" this sauce in his kitchen. Like so many Jamaican-Chines, Mr. Chow was a good businessman and he built a wonderfully successful company around the basic sauce, which is a combination of tomatoes, onions, mangoes, raisins, garlic, thyme cloves and more, and some secret ingredients. The sauce is cooked and then stored in oak barrels for a year before being separated and bottled. The bottled sauce has a shelf life of five years.

The residue is used to make Pickapeppa's jerk seasoning; and if you smell the basic ingredients you immediately want to go get some jerk food. The pepper sauce is made from Jamaican peppers and stands for three years in barrels after being cooked. These sauces are really like great wines.

By chance I met a lady, named Shirley Ledford, who works at the factory and she arranged a tour today, who guide as a funny bio-chemist named Noel, thanks to whom I am now so knowledgeable. The children followed most of the tour well, but found the factory "stinky".

The basic packaging for the sauces has not changed since I was a boy and it's nice to see a company that makes a great product being a wonderful ambassador by its selling abroad. It means that we in Jamaica sometimes don't see the products at all (such as the mango sauces). It is also important for the work it provides in Jamaica. The 40+ employees at the factory have to be added to numerous small farmers who provide the basic ingredients. The bottles used to be made in Jamaica but the company failed and now imported bottles come from Costa Rica.

I have a few bottles of the sauce to share this Christmas and I hope that like a fine wine it will be a good accompaniment to Christmas dinner.