Steenbergs Tasmanian Mountain Pepper

Steenbergs Tasmanian Mountain Pepper is roughly 10 times hotter than normal black pepper – you have been warned!

• Tasmanian Mountain Pepper is Hot: starts sweet, fruity that becomes intense, biting, numbing with a big heat.
• Mountain Pepper is a berry and not from the pepper family.
• Tasmanian pepper (Tasmania lanceolata) is often called ‘Mountain Pepper’ and comes from the uplands of Tasmania and South East Australia.
• Strangely, the indigenous Aboriginal peoples are thought not to have used these for spicing foods, although this may simply be colonial wishful thinking.
• The berries are dark bluey-black in colour and have a 5 – 8mm diameter knobbly round shape, with a ridge around the centre.

Axel’s Tasting Notes: Aroma: Sweet grass and pine woods, oily, turpentine, warming and hints of clementine. Flavour: Intensely hot versus black pepper – pungent bite and numbing sensation like Sichuan pepper that persists; no pepper pungency. Leaves: herbaceous woody taste, with hints of lemon and a tingling mouthfeel.

Food pairing: Slow-cooked casseroles of game, beef and lamb, marinades for red meat, pulses, carrots, squash. Best cooked – don’t add as pepper to cooked food. Leaves: salad dressing, omelettes.