University of Denver Autumn 2025

She asked her father’s vineyard manager, Nacho, about it. “He was like, ‘Of course I can grow these for you, no problem,’” Scommegna remembers. “So, he grew the peppers and came into the restaurant that year with two tubs full of beautifully ripe chiles.” Scommegna worked full time in the kitchen and grew and processed the chiles on the side. She then decided she no longer wanted to cook and moved to Boston to enroll in graduate school at Tufts University, studying agriculture and food policy. From there, she worked in various food related roles—from running an antihunger nonprofit

Building more than a business On the farm, no two days look alike. Sometimes it’s working in the hot afternoon sun, planting chiles or shoveling soil. Sometimes it’s driving an hour away to hand-deliver online orders. Scommegna says that’s part of the fun. The farm, which is the largest-scale producer of Espelette chile powder—dubbed Piment d’Ville—outside of France, has grown to 10 acres. Scommegna says she loves living in the small town and being a part of the farming community. “A focus for us is being able to provide good jobs for people in our community,” she says. “Being able to communicate with everyone that I work with is really important, so I spent the past two years taking a lot of Spanish classes to become a better boss and a better coworker. We’re really working on creating something that is what we all want it to be, instead of just what I envision it to be.”

program to apprenticing as a butcher—before she and her then-boyfriend, now husband decided to chase a dream and move back to California to found Boonville Barn Collective.

Interested in trying Scommegna’s chiles? Head to www.boonvillebarn.com

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UNIVERSITY OF DENVER MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2025