The Mist

Ella – Part of the Uva region, 3400ft above sea level is rich in bio-diversity, covered with numerous varieties of fauna and flora. Ella is surrounded by hills covered with forests and tea plantations. Ella has a cooler climate than surrounding lowlands, due to its elevation. Offers scenic beauty with misty mountains gives pepper a lot of moisture and shade to pepper wines leading to longer period of time to harvest from flowering. Flowering starts with new leaves during North - East monsoon from November to January maturing during July to August for harvesting. Historically famous Ella Pepper is bought by tourists who come for its scenic beauty, nature trails, waterfalls, and Restaurants operating in the region.

This pepper offers a strong aroma, strong pungency, and a better outlook in terms of color and size of the berries. Most of the farms are organic certified or naturally grown in home gardens.

Kandy Queen

Kandy- pepper growing area is situated, at an elevation of 1,640 feet in the midst of hills in the Kandy plateau. Kandy is rich in water sources as the Mahaweli River (The longest in Sri Lanka) flows through most of the geographical area. The Kandy region covers tropical plantations, mainly tea, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and cocoa. Flowering and pollination of pepper start with the South-East monsoon in April to May and harvesting is done in January to February. Mostly pepper is intercropped with tea as a traditional home garden crop, clove, and nutmeg. A shaded growing environment gives pepper spikes a longer maturity period gives pungency (piperin) and aroma (volatile oil) in its berries.

Black to gray color and wrinkled with unique aroma attract traditional traders and exporters all over the Island to bid for Kandy pepper.

The Pride

The central region of the Island, the green fertile valley at an elevation of 1200ft to 1800ft above sea level Surrounding Knuckles Mountain range is blessed with rains in both the monsoons of the Island. Flowering and pollination are expected in the November to December period harvesting will start in June on wards. Matale is the oldest pepper-growing and trading region in the country dating back to ancient times. Traditional and native farming practices and generation-to-generation knowledge of growing, harvesting, and drying give the distinctive characteristic to Matale pepper over the other areas in the Island.

Grey to Black in color, strong aroma, strong pungency, attractive outer appearance, and popularity among traditional merchants both locally and overseas make Matale pepper to be in great demand.

Black Gem

Pepper is grown in red soil rich in natural gems in Sri Lanka mainly intercropped with tea and new pepper varieties which were introduced 20 years to 30 years back. This region pepper wines grown in tea gardens get sunshine throughout the year without any disruption from the shade of other wines as the distance to the next wine is quite far. This helps pepper maturity period to shorten to 6 to 7 months as compared to other regions being 9 months. From April to May, South-West monsoon rains begin in Rathapura help flowering and pollination followed by harvesting in October onwards.

This black gem offers the definitive characteristic of fully Black, Big uniform sized, medium to average pungent with a strong aroma. Traders who look for whole pepper for its appearance of bold (5mm) have very good trust in Rathnapura Black Gem.

Sea Breeze

The pepper grown in the Southern part of Sri Lanka always gets the salty breeze which grows at lower elevations below 300ft from the sea level. The blessings of South–West monsoon rains in April to June support the flowering and pollination of these new pepper plants intercropped with tea and cinnamon gives its harvest in December- January months with distinctive pepper characteristics over other growing regions in Sri Lanka. Fully Blackish colour, big-sized round-shaped dried pepper berries always catch the eyes of traders in the domestic market over other regions. Ruhuna pepper has medium to lower pungency with a peppery aroma which always helps chefs to get the taste and is rich in the attraction of cuisine with whole blackberries.

The Dry Wind

Uva- bordering Eastern, Southern, and Central parts of Sri Lanka is rich in waterfalls, Rivers, and reservoirs which always keep the soil fertile for the pepper wine to reach its maximum height with natural supporting trees in Uva home gardens. 300ft to 1600ft elevation grown Uva pepper is blessed with the cold dry breeze from South- West region of the island helps to differentiate Uva pepper from others. Flowering and Pollination are supported by the North-East monsoon in October- January months after a reasonable dry period in July-September which gives pepper wine time to produce new leaves in monsoon followed by pepper spike.

Uva pepper wines get a reasonably longer period of nine months to mature pepper berries from flowering to harvest which results in delivering the World’s highest piperine content in pepper which gives the strongest pungency, highest volatile oil gives the strongest aroma to Uva pepper berries. Its natural high density of pepper berries always qualifies ASTA grade 01 pepper standards. Most of the Uva peppers are grown in a natural native environment and most of them are organic.

Highest bulk density, Strongest pungency, Strongest aroma, gray to black in color, and uniform round in shape always attract industry people to Uva pepper.

Pepper quality refers to a desirable characteristic in the taste and appearance of berries. These significant distinctive characteristics of pepper under more conductive circumstances could attain an exceptional level of concentration of flavanols which is recognized and distinguished as flavour.

The occurrence of exceptional quality or flavour character however is more dependent on prevailing special or extreme climatic conditions than the elevation itself.

Uva season is marked by dry winds, cold nights, and brighter cloudless days. These conditions subject the pepper wine to combine stresses of dehydration, high light density, and cold. These conditions have been observed to cause the formation of some important flavour compounds.