Long pepper (Piper longum) is a spice in the Piperaceae family native to India. As its name suggests, it is long and conical in shape with tiny, tightly-clustered peppercorns. It has a taste similar to, but hotter and slightly more complex than that of black, green, and white pepper.

The oldest known reference to long pepper comes from the ancient Indian textbooks of Ayurveda, where it was listed as a powerful medicament. One modern remedy based on Ayurvedic tradition calls for a mixture of long pepper, ghee, sesame oil, and milk, a concoction believed to enhance libido, aid sleep, and prevent colds.

In the fifth century, the botanical reached Greece, where it became a significant, well-known culinary spice, comparable in usage to black pepper. In fact, the two spices were often confused with each other, until Theophrastus distinguished black and long pepper in the first work of botany.

The word pepper is derived from the word for long pepper, pippali, a fact that furthered confusion between the two spices. A powerful medicine and flavoring agent, long pepper was so valuable throughout the Middle Ages that tenants were known to have paid their landlords with it.

Nearly ten centuries after the botanical made its way West, the discovery of the chili pepper in South America led to the decline in popularity of the long pepper, as dried chili pepper was remarkably similar in taste but could be grown just about anywhere. Tedious and labor-intensive, harvesting long pepper was no longer worth the effort, and so it faded out of popularity.

Today, long pepper is rare and difficult to find in the West, though it is still popular in Indian, Pakistani, Indonesian, and Malaysian cooking. It's used in dishes like Nihari, a beef or lamb stew popular in Pakistan, as well as to lend a sharp piquancy to Nepalese vegetable pickles. Labelled as pippali, it can be found at most Indian grocery stores.

In AMASS Dry Gin, long pepper joins cubeb and grains of paradise for a peppery finish on the rear palate.