A couple of years ago I bought some black pepper corns that were absolutely heavenly. I can’t remember what brand or variety they were, and I’ve tried three different ones since with no luck.
The heat level was fairly low, but the overall flavor profile was a revelation. They seemed a bit larger and darker that usual, and they added an almost vanilla flavor when ground into scrambled eggs.
Any idea what they may have been?
There is a list of peppercorn varieties here, with some description of their flavor. Maybe it will help you narrow it down to a couple of varieties to try?
Penzey’sTellicherry Pepper?
Thank you both! I will order some of the telicherry and try it out. I have to say though, I find it difficult to believe that anyone could have written a description of this pepper without using the word vanilla.
I like Penzey’s Whole Special Extra Bold.
There is a great choice of peppers out there - I like a non-pepper pepper, szechuan pepper. It has a chemical in it that makes your tongue tingle, and has a sort of lemony sharp taste. Pink pepper is also a non-pepper pepper - not sure what plant they come from put it isn’t piper nigrum. White, black and green pepper are all 3 different stages of piper nigrum and have a similar flavor. There is also long pepper and cubebs for alternate ‘peppers’ that are non peppers.
This is hitting on one of my favorite hobbies, medieval and renaissance foods. 
Iposted a couple years back about a recipe from the book Soup for the Qan called Bal-Po Soup. I originally read this because a friend is one of the authors and I have a copy. On a medieval food discussion list we were discussing what they did back then for hot foods if there were no capsicum type peppers [a new world plant] and this popped up.
There are all sorts of great herbs and spices out there that we don’t see in our boring grocery store. Penzeys does carry a heck of a lot of stuff that you normally won’t find, and there are spicers online that can provide even more of the exotic stuff - you just have to dig around.