Butch Taylor

Location: Crosby, Mississippi, USA
Known For: Creator of the Trinidad Scorpion “Butch T”

Butch Taylor is a legendary American chili grower best known for breeding the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T, a strain that once held the title of the world’s hottest pepper. His work helped usher in a new wave of competitive chili cultivation focused on pushing the boundaries of capsaicin concentration.

Taylor owned a hot sauce company called Zamora Pepper Company in Mississippi, where he began experimenting with a variety of superhot peppers. Around the early 2000s, he began working with seeds from Trinidad Scorpion varieties and selectively bred for a strain with extreme heat and scorpion-like tail tips. The result was the Butch T strain, named after him by Neil Smith of The Hippy Seed Company in Australia, who helped popularize the pepper globally.

In 2011, the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T was officially recognized by the Guinness World Records as the world’s hottest pepper, measuring 1,463,700 Scoville Heat Units (SHU). Although it was later surpassed by the Carolina Reaper, the Butch T made international headlines and brought mainstream attention to the emerging world of superhot breeding.

Taylor is known not only for his pioneering work in heat breeding, but also for his generosity in sharing seeds with other growers. His strain has become a foundation for many subsequent superhot hybrids.

Notable Creations:

  • Trinidad Scorpion “Butch T”
  • Early hybridization work that inspired subsequent superhot breeding in the U.S. and Australia

Legacy:
A pivotal figure in the global recognition of superhot peppers. His namesake strain helped set the stage for later record-breakers and cemented the Scorpion phenotype as an industry standard.

Sources / References

  1. Guinness World Records (2011): “World’s Hottest Chili Pepper – Trinidad Scorpion Butch T”
  2. The Hippy Seed Company – Historical blog posts and video reviews
  3. Zamora Pepper Company archives
  4. Interviews with Neil Smith and Butch Taylor (archived on The Hot Pepper forums and chili enthusiast YouTube channels)