Next: about 15 Dec to 12 Feb 2027
Kerala pepper harvest
From December to February, the Malabar coast picks green pepper berries and dries them in the sun to black.
Spices for Kerala pepper harvest
Kerala's vines of Piper nigrum fruit in a long season that peaks from December to February in the hills of Wayanad, Idukki and the Western Ghats. Pickers climb poles and bamboo ladders to cut the spikes of green berries, which are threshed, scalded and dried in the sun for several days until they shrivel and turn black. Green pepper is also pickled in brine and sold fresh. Malabar pepper was the reason ships crossed oceans for two thousand years, and the harvest is still celebrated in markets in Kochi, where each grade is sorted by size and bulk density.
The spices
Also part of it, and being written: Piper nigrum (The climbing vine behind the peppercorn.).
Written by the EveryMasala desk with AI assistance. Background: "Black pepper" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Long pepper: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0, source