Picking the pepper
The harvest start around March-April, just before the rainy season as pepper does not like too much water and will ruin the crop if left longer. It begins as soon as a few fruits at the base of the spikes begin to turn red, and before the fruit is fully mature, and still hard. The whole fruit spikes are hand-picked as harvesting is done without any mechanical equipment. Farmers pick the unripened berries and transport them in large wicker baskets to the sorting platform.
Colour sorting
The first step of the pepper processing is the colour sorting as all four peppercorns, green, black, white and red, come from the same vine. Black pepper is produced from the still-green, unripe drupes of the pepper plant while red pepper is produced from the red fully mature berries.
Cooking the pepper
The green and red pepper drupes are cooked briefly in hot water to clean them, prepare them for drying but also to fix their final colour. This is an important operation that entirely depend on the traditional know-how and expertise of our farmers. Shortly after being cooked, the green berries will turn brown-black while the red will stay the same.
The white pepper
White pepper consists of only the inner seed with the pericarp removed. The process of removing the skin is called retting and takes place by soaking the ripe red and yellow berries in water for a few days. The skin of the berry will decompose and the bits of skin still left on the berry are removed by rubbing them.
Drying the pepper
All our pepper is then sun dried in the natural way, it is laid out on bamboo mats in the direct sun for three to four days. During this time the pepper needs to be turned and moved around every few hours to ensure it is drying nice and evenly for the perfect final product.
