I was looking for this topic but missed it at first. This is a board link to a pepper house south of here. The guy is really an interesting person to talk with. I considered contract growing for him several years ago. I learned about the “pepper wars” from one of those magazine articles linked on his site a few years back.
One of my now-gone gardening friends, Red Slackjaw, used to grow his pepper plants as ornamentals. He held them overwinter outdoors. He was in a warmer zone south of here, near the Puckerbutt operation.