On the last day of September, the jury members of the Taste Awards by Metro visited the company Aleva in Novi Kneževac, the 2024 award winner in the category “Best Spice”
Since it is the season of harvesting and processing peppers, Aleva’s trademark product, company director Željko Ciganović and marketing director Nataša Predić took the guests on a tour of the factory grounds to see the “red fields” with tons of peppers ready for drying, grinding, and packaging.
After the tour of the machine and mill facilities—most of which date back to 1947, the year the factory was founded, but still operate flawlessly—a perfect goulash was served in the factory restaurant, red just as the name Aleva suggests (in Turkish, “alev” means bright red).
Incidentally, the official name of Novi Kneževac in Hungarian is Törökkanizsa (“Turkish Kanjiža”). Banat, in fact, was under Ottoman rule for two decades longer than the neighboring region of Bačka.
Additionally, the owner of Aleva, Mr. Hristivoj Milošević, received another recognition this year—the “Diplomacy & Commerce Award” for Lifetime Achievement. At the age of 93, Hristivoj Milošević is one of the oldest active entrepreneurs in Serbia.
