Haranea
Haranea is a small organic farm in Itxassou, in the French Basque Country, one of the ten villages around Espelette allowed to grow the AOP Piment d'Espelette. The farm grows its peppers organically and turns them itself into the three products Clipperton imports: the ground pepper, a concentrated purée and a jelly with basil.
The farm
Ferme Haranea sits in the Basaburu quarter of Itxassou, one of the villages that ring Espelette. It is run as a GAEC, a French family farming partnership, by Christian Aguerre, Gilles Billaud and Martine Bouquerot, with Christian's son Xan now taking over the family side of the business after training with a Kintoa pork producer. On just nine hectares the partners run three productions side by side: Basque pigs raised in woodland, poultry on pasture, and Espelette peppers. The farm is known locally for its part in saving the old Basque pig breed, and it cures its own hams for two years on site.
The peppers are certified organic, and the farm belongs to Idoki, an association of Basque farmers whose name means "cards on the table". Idoki started in 2010 with four organic Espelette pepper growers, and its label guarantees that a product is genuinely made on the farm from the farm's own harvest, on a human scale, and sold as directly as possible to the people who eat it. Christian Aguerre also co-founded Basaburuko Saskia, a farm-to-door vegetable delivery service that now employs around a dozen people.
The AOP Piment d'Espelette itself is the pepper that Basque cooking is built on: warm and aromatic rather than sharply hot, dried and ground into a fine powder. At Haranea the ripe peppers are also pressed into pulp and set into jelly, so that the same harvest reaches the kitchen in three forms.
What they make
The Espelette Pepper Powder is the classic: 50 g of organic, AOP-certified ground pepper with a warm, subtly spicy character, the seasoning to keep beside the salt for eggs, fish, charcuterie and even chocolate. The Espelette Pepper Purée is the pepper in its most intense form, 90% ripe pepper pulp blended with cider vinegar, for marinades, sauces, vinaigrettes and grilled dishes. The Espelette Pepper and Basil Jelly pairs the pepper's fruity heat with fresh basil, a condiment for cheese, charcuterie and roast poultry or vegetables. Both the purée and the jelly come in 90 g glass jars, and all three are organic.
- Espelette pepper powder, AOP, organic
- Espelette pepper purée, 90% pulp with cider vinegar
- Espelette pepper and basil jelly
All three are in the Haranea collection.
Why Clipperton chose them
Clipperton is a family importer, and we would rather buy Espelette pepper from the people who grow it than from a brand that buys it in. Haranea is a nine-hectare farm where the same three partners plant the peppers, harvest them, grind them and put them in the jar, under a label whose whole point is transparency. That is as direct as a relationship with a producer gets, and it is what we want to bring to Canada and the United States.
