DURHAM, N.C. — The love of hot sauces and peppers is one that friends Alec Lent-Bews and Clay Neigher have shared since high school.

In 2017, that love of heat turned into a business, Bull City Pepper Company.

What You Need To Know

  • The N.C. Hot Sauce Contest & Festival is Friday and Saturday in Oxford 

  • The Bull City Pepper Company won awards last year and has entered again

  • This year is the 18th annual gathering of hot pepper and sauce fans

  • More than 15,000 people go to Oxford for the festival

“He was a master grower, and I love to tell stories,” Neigher said. “We sort of assembled the brand over about a year and a half of 40 different iterations of a recipe.”

It’s hard work, taking the product from seed to sauce. This year’s weather has put them through ups and downs.

“There was a little kind of lull, I'd say, in July with the heatwave that we had. A lot of the peppers really got stressed out, dropped a lot of the pods,” Lent-Bews said. “Everything's bounced back now, and hopefully we can get at least another two or three months out of the season and kind of make up for the slow summer we had.”

Since they began, they’ve added flavors and developed new sauces. It’s been a long process, but a rewarding and award-winning one.

They’re preparing to head back to the N.C. Hot Sauce Contest and Festival in Oxford this weekend.

Lent-Bews said he first heard about the festival around 2017, when he drove past a billboard and decided he had to go.

“A couple times, just as a customer to kind of see what was going on,” Lent-Bews said. “But then in 2021, we really went full-fledged, brought our first sauce, brought the whole team, and, yeah, been going ever since.”

Last year they won best overall, as well as other awards.

The festival has grown over the years, now bringing more than 15,000 people to the town of Oxford for the weekend.

Only North Carolina sauces, rubs and peppers can enter the contest. The two say it’s proof of how strong the pepper community is in the state that this festival is going strong year after year.

“We just love seeing people every year at Oxford and lifting them up, like we've been lifted up," Neigher said. "We want everyone to kind of succeed here."

"That's sort of a unique vibe to North Carolina, I would say, or at least something that I've noticed," he said. "It's just no one's trying to throw shade. Everyone's trying to lift everyone up. "

For more information about Bull City Pepper Company, click here.

The festival is from Friday to Saturday. Find more information here.