Organic white pepper

White Peppercorns

The pepper tree is a flowering tree in the Piperaceae family that gives us the white pepper, which is the ripe and fully grown shelled fruits.

The pepper tree is cultivated for its fruit, which is usually dried and used as a spice and condiment. The fruit, known as a peppercorn when dried, is approx. 5 millimeters in diameter, dark red when fully ripe, and like all stone fruits, contains a single seed. These are what we call peppercorns or simply as pepper, or more precisely as black pepper (cooked and dried unripe fruits), green pepper (dried unripe fruits) or white pepper (ripe fruit seeds).

White pepper comes most often from Sri Lanka, but also from other places in the Asian tropics. Currently, Vietnam is the world's largest producer and exporter of pepper, producing 34% of the world's peppercorns (2008 figures).

Dried pepper has been used since ancient times for both its taste and as a traditional medicine. Black pepper is the world's most traded spice. It is one of the most common spices in European cuisine. The strong spicy taste in black pepper is due to the chemical substance piperine.

Latin name: Piper nigrum