Understanding Pepper as a Tasting Note

When reading tasting notes on wine, beer or cigars you will eventually see the description of pepper. It may have a peppery aroma, slight peppery taste or a spicy peppery flavor. When I read the word pepper, I usually think of black pepper. And, there have been times when I taste a peppery note and I have started to think, ‘what kind of pepper is this,’ because it does not taste like black pepper it seemed softer. The peppery like taste can come from several things; the alcohol content, the ingredients used that make a bitter taste, and citrus notes.

So, thinking about pepper as a profile flavor got me to the Spice Merchant Store and I bought four different peppercorns: black peppercorn, white peppercorn, green peppercorn, and pink peppercorn. In this series of postings we will review the four different peppercorns so we can use them in our description of wine, beer, and cigars.

I bought a half an ounce of each peppercorn and I poured each into a small glass so I could spend some time smelling the peppercorns and then I took a bite of each one to experience its particular flavor.