How a pepper lot is cleaned on bamboo trays

When a sack of black pepper arrives from Wayanad, it is far from ready to sell. It carries stalks, dust, light and hollow corns, small stones from the drying yard and sometimes pinheads, the tiny corns that never filled out. Cleaning it takes a full day in our Mattancherry godown.

First, the sack is weighed and a handful is taken for testing. Lalitha, who has run the cleaning room for twenty years, crushes a few corns, smells them and checks the moisture by biting one. Pepper above about 12% moisture can grow mould in storage, so damp lots are spread on mats under the skylights for another day.

The pepper then goes through two sieves. The first, with 4.75 mm holes, keeps back the extra-bold corns we sell as Tellicherry. The second catches the bold grade and lets dust and pinheads fall through. Next, the women winnow each tray, tossing the corns in the air near the open window so the breeze carries off light, hollow ones and dust.

The last step is slow. Six women sit around wide bamboo trays and pick through every lot by hand, removing stones, stalks and discoloured corns. A 50 kg sack takes about five hours. The cleaned pepper is bagged, labelled with the grower’s name and date, and stored in the cool back room until a Tuesday, when part of it goes to the grinder.