For Chris Green his fascination with hot peppers started when he was about four years old growing up on his family’s Texas cattle ranch. When he would occasionally sass his mom back, she would put some Tabasco hot sauce in my mouth as punishment. Well, little did Chris’ mom know that she was starting him on the road to hot sauce perdition, and she must have scratched her head more than once when he became sassier than ever just to get more hot sauce. Of course, Chris never told his mother that he liked the hot stuff. Meanwhile Chris had developed quite a taste for pepper fire. Fortunately, they had a garden, and all of the children had a plot in the garden that was their own responsibility. Chris grew as many hot peppers as he could get away with, and by the time he was six, he was avidly experimenting with fiery concoctions made from the different hot peppers he grew.
Throughout his childhood Chris was in and out of the kitchen cooking either alone or with his mother as much as possible. He was constantly developing, experimenting, and creating new and different hot sauces from any and all ingredients he could think of. From a very young age, most of the Christmas and birthday presents Chris gave were consistently some of his hot sauces. Nobody seemed to mind though. In fact, everyone loved the nefarious brews he concocted.
Fast forward through high school and college to current day Vermont. Now a lot of things can be said of Vermont, both good and bad, but one thing is true: It is a great place to start a specialty food business, and that is just what Chris did. He started testing some of his fiery brews on the unsuspecting people who frequented the farmer’s markets in Vermont, and contrary to my expectations in this cold land, most of them LOVED the flavors they were fed. At that point in time, Chris knew I had a good thing going.
After months of researching and cutting the red tape that tries to strangle the food industry, Chris started Greene’s Gourmet Hot sauce Company in mid-July, 2004. It has been a huge hit in Vermont, and keeps growing by leaps and bounds. All of the sauces that Chris makes do not contain any dyes, capsaicin extract, any artificial preservatives or ingredients that taste bad and are bad for you. They are all natural. The color and heat in each sauce is from the whole fresh peppers.