Hot Chili Sauce · Berlin, Germany, with the chilies grown in Poland
Chocoberrie
The only producer to take two Best in Category in one year, judged blind: a Berlin chef who grows his own organic chilies on a family farm in Poland.
Chocoberrie is a fermented chocolate-Habanero sauce built like a restaurant pastry section: cocoa for depth, beet syrup for body, blackberry and blackcurrant for lift, with apple, red onion and sherry vinegar. Deep brown, sweet berries up front, dark cocoa underneath, the Habanero behind.
Karol Wojciechowski
Pandemonic is Berlin chef Karol Wojciechowski's label, an alumnus of the city's two-Michelin-star Fischers Fritz, who grows his own organic chilies on a family farm in Poland and ships them to Berlin to ferment and bottle by hand.
Small batches, a three-month natural fermentation, recipes built for flavour over Scoville. Chocoberrie and the chili oil Chili Chrisp both took Gold and Best in Category, two very different briefs from the same producer in the same year.