As September arrives, the smell of roasting green chile is permeating the air in cities and towns all around Colorado. It’s an unmistakable fragrance in the same way the scent of vanilla or chocolate is unmistakable. And now, this sweet, smoky aroma is filling the air on street corners, outside grocery stores and even along Colorado roadsides. The giant roasting drums, roaring as they spin, create the unique aroma that chile lovers wait for each fall.
A good portion of the crop—the best, actually- –say people like chile farmer Dalton Milberger, comes from Pueblo. In fact, as southern Colorado agriculture goes—a region with some of the state’s
best farm produce—Pueblo’s chile may sit atop the pyramid of most recognizable crops. It’s not by accident. Pueblo has not missed the opportunity to showcase this very popular fruit—and yes, chile is techni- cally a fruit because it contains seeds.
Now in its 29th year, the Pueblo Chile and Frijole Festival is set to kick off September 22-24 along the city’s historic Union Avenue. From its meager roots to today, the festival has grown each year. Last year’s celebration brought in more than 150,000 visitors, a full third of whom came from “out of the city or state,” said Pueblo Chamber of Commerce Vice President Donielle Kitzman.
Kitzman almost gushes over the Pueblo chile, comparing it to a movie star or celebrity. It’s “sexy and fun and spices everything up,” she said recently in a Pueblo Chieftain interview adding, “It brings everyone together because we can all agree it tastes great.”
Despite the growing fame of Pueblo’s popular pepper, every year around this time, it has to share the spotlight with its equally famous and, perhaps, better known brethren, New Mexico’s Hatch chile.
Like Colorado, the Land of Enchantment’s chile has its own license plate but New Mexico has gone one better. It has actually passed legislation—an official law!!!—making the state the first to have its own official state aroma. Yes. The smell of roasting Hatch chile is codified into New Mexico state law.
“Chile is tied into nearly every aspect of New Mexico life,” New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, said in Travel and Leisure Magazine. The Hatch chile, said the Governor, it is woven into “our culture to our economy.” Indeed, last year’s crop weighed in at 53,000 tons.
By comparison, the Pueblo Chile Growers Association grows and harvests somewhere between 700-800 acres of chiles each season. It has no firm figures on the crop’s annual tonnage. But it swears that what it doesn’t have in quantity it more than makes up in quality. Especially its MiraSol variety, Pueblo’s ‘belle of the ball’ green chile.
The MiraSol gets its name because it’s a unique variety of chile that actually grows upward facing the sun. In Spanish, the term literally means ‘looking at the sun.’
Milberger Farms has taken its chile and blended it into salsa, sausage and even fudge. It also ships out of state. It also sells to Whole Foods which, in turn, sells Pueblo chile in a handful of Rocky Mountain states.
With the pandemic no longer ‘the ghost at the banquet,’ Pueblo is planning its biggest ever Chile and Frijoles Festival. This year’s festival will also include a two-night hot-air balloon lighting. Each will take place along the city’s River Walk. The festival will also include a record 200 or more vendors.
Pueblo, said Kitzman, has done its homework in getting the word out about its big fall festival. It’s also gotten a helping hand from the state’s Department of Agriculture via a marketing survey. The survey’s results show that 61% of respondents had heard of Pueblo chile, nearly double the figure from 2016. Only one in ten taking the survey had never heard of Pueblo’s crown jewel fruit.
Both tasty and healthful, the chile is a favorite around the world. Chiles kick up the flavor of foods without adding fat, they increase metabolism, are excellent sources of vitamins A and C, preserve foods, are linked to gastrointestinal health, aid in the prevention of heart diseases, cancer, asthma, and allergies, and are even used to control pain. No wonder chiles are the most widely grown seasoning in the world! Ranging from mild and sweet, to very hot.
