Profiting From a Pack of Peppers : Products: Outerbridge’s Original Sherry Peppers Sauce, a Bermudan favorite now marketed in U.S. gourmet shops, is based on a recipe concocted by British sailors in the 1600s.

There is virtually no manufacturing in this 22-mile-long, 2-mile-wide, fish hook-shaped island chain in the Western Atlantic, not even raw materials for export.

But there’s one Bermuda-made product found next to the salt and pepper shakers in virtually every home and restaurant here, and it is also sold in gourmet shops in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York and all across America.

It comes from the basement of Yeaton Outerbridge’s 300-year-old home in Flatts, a tiny village in Smith’s Parish on Harrington Sound.

It is Outerbridge’s Original Sherry Peppers Sauce.

Outerbridge concocts his spicy seasoning from Sherry imported from Spain and from 17 spices and cherry peppers imported from America. The sauce steeps in 50-gallon vats for nine months before it is bottled.

The sauce is a 300-year-old Bermuda tradition, having started with British sailors on sailing vessels in the Royal Navy in the 1600s. They called it pepper wine.

After a few days at sea, food without refrigeration would begin to spoil, and sherry peppers sauce made it palatable. In those days, the peppers were grown in Bermuda.

“Bermudans traditionally grew the cherry peppers in their back yards and made their own sherry peppers sauce,” explained Outerbridge, 62, as he stirred the sauce steeping in his basement vats.

“But peppers were becoming scarce. Not everyone had them. That’s when my late cousin, Robert Outerbridge, a World War II RAF pilot, and I decided to make the sauce commercially in 1964.”

Today, only a few of the 57,000 Bermudans on this island chain, 568 miles east of Cape Hatteras, N.C., make their own supplies of the condiment. They leave that to Outerbridge.

“Bermudans pour sherry peppers on almost everything they eat,” Outerbridge said. “They are addicted to it because it adds zest to everything from soup and scrambled eggs to grouse, grilled cheese and scaloppine.”

There is a saying in the islands that Bermuda fish chowder, the national dish, is not Bermuda fish chowder without Outerbridge’s sherry peppers sauce.

For visitors to this land of sparkling beaches, mild temperatures, whistling tree frogs and land crabs, a popular souvenir is a bottle of Outerbridge’s sauce.

Outerbridge, who sells his product in all 50 American states and does a big mail order business, is a 14th-generation Bermudan, a descendant of Thomas Outerbridge, who came here from Yorkshire in 1619.

He makes a dozen other condiments and jellies in his basement kitchen, but sherry peppers sauce makes up two-thirds of his sales. The logo for Outerbridge Peppers Ltd. shows the company name embracing the word sauces with flames leaping from each letter.

Outerbridge would not disclose the company’s annual sales, but he admitted to making a “tidy” income from his small basement industry, with 50% of his production sold in Bermuda and 50% in the United States.