Black peppercorns are the berries of a tropical climbing shrub the berries are picked in bunchesm on their stalks when they are still green and un ripe these bunches are left overnight to begin fermenting before they are dried in the sun the drying takes around 5 days and at the end of the process the berries will have dropped from their stalks the fleshy outer casing will have shrivelled and the berries will look like the black peppercorns that we are used to seeing