Wonders of Wine and Food

 Bell Peppers and Hummus

A really good snack for your happy hours is Hummus and Peppers, green red or yellow. I prefer the baby peppers. They all go well with wine.

Most  food and wine writers avoid the subject as the pepper's flavours change with the colour. They also change with cooking and how they are prepared. 

A vegetal green pepper  is best suited to a fruity sweet wine. I have a host of white wines I like with the green or red peppers. They are Pinot Grigio, Bacchus or a Verdejo Pinot Grigio, Bacchus or a verdejo.

Adding hummus changes everything smooth creamy hummus pairs well with a creamy white wine that has undergone malolactic fermentation   You could go with a Chardonnay or a white Rhône blend. Classic hummus also pairs nicely with a medium-bodied rosé or light fruity red like Pinot Noir or Beaujolais. But remember their are so many flavours of hummus you have to select wisely.

Barbara prefers a red wine. There are so many that work well with both red and green peppers. Try a Grenache or a Gamay. For those of you who like Zinfandel its works well with both peppers and the hummus.

What about Chardonnay , to me it goes with plain Hummus, but not straight peppers. 

When roasting peppers we go with Pinot Grigio .

When using a Sun Dried Tomato hummus and peppers go with does black cherry wines such as Pinot noir Also try a Cab Sauvignon. A friend of our loves pepper and hummus with Malbac

If you are adding a spicy hummus try a Riesling! 

If you’ve been wondering why youthful wines from particular grapes taste really fruit-driven and others have a wide array of savory flavors, the answer may be methoxypyrazine. A group of these savory flavors (which includes “bell pepper”) come from a from a specific aroma compound called methoxypyrazine (often called “pyrazines” for short). The compound is found in higher proportions in the “Bordeaux-family” grapes: Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Malbec.

If you can experiment to find the wine that best suites you..

Humans can distinguish more than 1 trillion scents, according to new research. The findings show that our sense of smell is far more discriminating than previously thought.

“The message here is that we have more sensitivity in our sense of smell than for which we give ourselves credit. We just don’t pay attention to it and don’t use it in everyday life,” Dr. Keller says.

One  study claims that there is an approximate 30 percent difference between any two people's sense of smell. So what pepper and wine combination one may enjoy someone else will not.