Pepper Wine - Corbaci - I'm going for it!

[BigDaveK]

I'm curious and excited about this one!!
Corbaci is a delicious sweet pepper that I've grown for at least five years. The seeds and membrane are bitter so I got rid of those.
Since it's a sweet pepper with almost zero capsaicin I decided to do something crazy - I'm treating it as any other fruit or vegetable and used 2.3 lbs. Yikes! Like I said, curious and excited.

 

[BigDaveK]

Transferred this morning.
I was happy it picked up some color.
Good pepper flavor followed by an unidentified fruitiness. Too early for aroma - very yeasty with a hint of pepper.
Zero heat. A pepper drinking wine - crazy.
We'll see where this goes. I'll have to freeze some for another batch just in case.

 

[BigDaveK]

Racked this morning. Wonderful pepper flavor and NO heat. Picked up some nice color. Bone dry (1.094 to .988) but I'm wondering what a little back sweetening will do.

 

[winemaker81]

Racked this morning. Wonderful pepper flavor and NO heat. Picked up some nice color. Bone dry (1.094 to .988) but I'm wondering what a little back sweetening will do.

It appears bench testing is in order at bottling time!

Are you bottling in 750's or 375's? Smaller bottles allow taste testing without using the batch up too quickly.

If you're comparing a large number of wines, there's less overage. I have 7 wines from 2021 (2 barrels, same wines unoaked, plus 3 varietals unoaked) that we plan to blind taste at the US Thanksgiving. I'm probably going to pour half of each bottle into a 375 and re-cork, as large tastings at home either produce really drunk people or have a lot of leftovers.

 

[QuiQuog]

I love the color. It will be interesting to see it in the bottle.

 

[BigDaveK]

It appears bench testing is in order at bottling time!

Are you bottling in 750's or 375's? Smaller bottles allow taste testing without using the batch up too quickly.

I have both sizes. I went a little crazy buying bottles when I first started and - considering the price increases since then - glad I did.

I'm slowly upping my batches to 3-gallon. That should give me more leeway to have dry, lightly sweet, and sweet from the same batch.

 

[BigDaveK]

Bottling day!
Been learning about my ingredients lately so I'll share some of that.

The red color of the peppers comes from carotenoids, mostly capsanthin and capsorubin. In the gallon jug there was a hint of red but in the bottles it's not noticeable. Obviously it doesn't hold up through fermentation. Tomatoes also get their color from carotenoids which explains why my tomato wine also lost it's color.

Aroma: the smell in fresh peppers comes from bell pepper pyrazine. (To be super geeky: 2-methoxy-3-isobutylpyrazin) We can detect the smell in quantities as little as .002 parts per trillion. However...gone! No pepper smell at all. It smells like a generic wine.

Taste: the Corbaci is a sweet pepper and has zero capsaicin. The wine is fruity and has a black pepper flavor - and it's not subtle!! It really tastes exactly like fresh ground black pepper. Piperine is one of the main compounds in black pepper but I haven't confirmed it's also in the Corbaci.
It's "nice" dry but back sweetening put it over the top. I'll make it again.

 

[BarrelMonkey]

Thanks for sharing! If you're interested in what compounds give rise to what aromas and flavors, I highly recommend Nose Dive by Harold McGee. (He also wrote a comprehensive guide to the science of cooking, which is also great fun if you like messing around in the lab and the kitchen...)

 

[BigDaveK]

Thanks for sharing! If you're interested in what compounds give rise to what aromas and flavors, I highly recommend Nose Dive by Harold McGee. (He also wrote a comprehensive guide to the science of cooking, which is also great fun if you like messing around in the lab and the kitchen...)

You're welcome!

I'm familiar with the Science of Cooking web site. Fun and useful information! Highly recommended.

I'm getting most of my information from scientific papers. I looked at the preview of the book on Amazon and sure enough I recognized some papers in his references. Gosh, I could have saved some time had I known about the book! Thanks!

I think I have 7 more pepper wines to be bottled in the next few weeks and knowing the nitty-gritty about the ingredients makes it more fun and interesting to me.