96-Word Valentine to the Unicorn Magnum Plus, the World’s Best Pepper Mill

Illustration by Steven Stankiewicz

I blame Chris Schlesinger for my 15-year romance with the world’s greatest pepper mill. Specifically: the chef’s manically spice-driven cookbooks, full of recipes calling for fresh-ground peppercorns not by the coy pinch or teaspoon, but by the full and partial cup. Because my garden-variety grinder required partial days to produce that amount, I upgraded to a real workhorse, the Unicorn Magnum Plus ($45), which, to this day, showers down feathery piles of Tellicherry like a ferocious beast. Only recently did I discover that my mail-order beauty (unicornmills.com) is made in Nantucket, the company’s headquarters since 1986.