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Okay, admittedly, I haven't tried every brand of black pepper on earth. But I have tried quite a few. In fact, the reason I started Reluctant Trading was because ours won a blind taste test against the biggest brands in the country. You can read the story here. But there are actual reasons that I believe top chefs in restaurants and at home are paying a few cents more to use Reluctant Trading Tellicherry Peppercorns.
1. We buy directly from my exclusive partner in India, Mr. Divakar. There are no middlemen.
We only buy what we need. We never stockpile pepper or buy through distributors. That means our peppercorns don't sit around in hot, musty warehouses waiting to see daylight. So our pepper is literally as fresh as it can be. I personally visit Divakar and the farmers to ensure that we are always buying the best we can find. Check out my photos.
2. Mr. Divakar cherry picks (Tellicherry picks) the best pepper from multiple farms, not just one.
Mr. Divakar literally travels from farm to farm selecting the most aromatic peppercorns he can locate in southern India. Since we are not exclusive with a single farm, we are able to select the cream of the crop. While loyalty to any one particular farmer is a nice story, we reward the farmers who grow the most beautiful, aromatic peppercorns. And yes, there is a difference. A huge difference. Until I started Reluctant Trading, I thought pepper was pepper.
3. We buy the best black pepper variety available: Tellicherry Peppercorns.
Not only do we buy Tellicherry Peppercorns, we buy the largest Tellicherry peppercorns available. While 4.25mm constitutes Tellicherry, we only buy 4.75mm size and above. Special Extra Bold is the technical name. These are the largest and the most aromatic. Read this blog post to understand the difference between Regular Malabar Black Pepper vs. Tellicherry Peppercorns.
4. We only buy our black pepper from the most famous pepper growing region in the world, Wayanad, India.
The state of Kerala in India is famous for its pepper. The growing conditions and altitude are ideal for growing peppercorns. Europeans have been importing pepper from this region since Roman times.
5. Top chefs from James Beard award-winning restaurants buy our pepper.
We sell our pepper regularly to several nationally recognized restaurants and chefs in Chicago and Portland. They literally booted their regular boring black pepper and replaced it with our Tellicherry Peppercorns.
6. Bonus Reason. I had no interest in pepper. I was reluctant. Then I tasted this pepper and suddenly found myself in the spice business.
I had no interest in going into the spice business. It was not my lifelong dream. Then my friend, Mr. Divakar, sent me some of his Tellicherry Peppercorns. The rest is Reluctant history.
Buy Reluctant Trading's Tellicherry Peppercorns
