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29 September 2026 Chili, Jacquin and 24 Stories of Vienna
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• The Vienna-based Chili-Werkstatt marks ten years of its own history with a 2026 Advent calendar. From chili plants to a specialist workshopThe Chili-Werkstatt in Vienna's 5th district began taking shape in 2008, when Dr. Simone J. Taschée and Dr. Klaus Postmann started importing chili and barbecue products. The business gradually expanded into growing plants, processing fresh chilies and producing sauces, salsas and spice mixtures. In 2016, the Chili-Werkstatt was established as a specialist business devoted to the world of chili.Today, its range goes considerably beyond hot sauce. The shop and online store include dried chilies, flakes and powders, pickled products, oils, spice blends, mills, sweets, books, seeds and chili plants. The company also offers workshops, including courses in making hot sauces and spice mixes. This broadening from a single ingredient to a field of knowledge is relevant to the Advent calendar. Rather than treating chili simply as a measure of heat, the project presents it as a plant with different aromas, culinary uses and cultural histories. Why 1776 mattersThe historical starting point for the anniversary is 1776, when Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin's work marked an important moment in the scientific study of chili in Vienna. Jacquin, director of Vienna's Botanical Garden from 1768, published a scientific description of Capsicum chinense in his Hortus Botanicus Vindobonensis in 1776. The botanical name is still in use today.Chili, however, was not new to Vienna at the time. Capsicum had reached Central Europe considerably earlier. Carolus Clusius, who lived and worked in Vienna in the late 16th century, cultivated paprika in his garden, while historical evidence also records chili cultivation in Moravia as early as 1585. Jacquin's significance therefore lies not in being the first to bring chili to Vienna, but in its systematic scientific study during a new era of botanical research. As director of the Botanical Garden, he developed its collections according to contemporary scientific principles and documented plants gathered during his earlier expedition to the West Indies. His 1776 publication provides a clear milestone in the scientific history of Capsicum in Vienna. Twenty-four flavours, twenty-four pieces of ViennaThe Advent calendar takes this botanical history as its starting point and moves from plants into cultural history. Each of the 24 doors contains a chili creation connected with a person, figure or motif associated with Vienna. The announced names include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Gustav Klimt, Sigmund Freud, Maria Theresia, Johann Nestroy, Empress Elisabeth and the legendary figure of the dear Augustin.The products themselves are deliberately varied. The calendar can contain whole dried chilies, powders, flakes, sauces, oils, mustard, salts, chocolate and spice mixtures, with flavours ranging from mild to extremely hot. The emphasis is consequently not only on heat, but on the different ways Capsicum can contribute fruitiness, sweetness, smokiness or savoury depth. One of the announced examples is Mozart's "Frucht-Sinfonie", a fruit-forward chili sauce. Here the connection between a historical figure and a flavour is intentionally playful: music becomes the metaphor for combining several taste notes. A calendar as a small cultural mapLimited to 250 editions, the calendar makes the number itself part of the story. Its two anniversaries — ten years of the Chili-Werkstatt and the 250-year historical milestone associated with Jacquin's botanical work — meet in an object designed around 24 small discoveries.The idea is interesting precisely because it treats culinary history as more than a list of famous names. A spice can be a starting point for asking how plants travelled, how botanical knowledge was produced and how a city attaches stories to food. The result is less a conventional Advent calendar than a compact, edible route through different layers of Vienna's history. Image: Chili Advent calendar 2026 by Chili-Werkstatt, created for the company's 10-year anniversary and the 250-year Jacquin milestone. © Chili-Werkstatt/AI-processed |