News — pepper

You smell a red wine and, among the fruit and other aromas, recognise something familiar: freshly ground black pepper. The same smell that rises from a dish when you turn the pepper mill. But how does a spice find its way into the aroma of wine? It is not an added ingredient. Behind this resemblance lies a story that begins with the grape and involves a little-known molecule capable of leaving a distinctive impression: rotundone. The name rotundone comes neither from wine nor from pepper. It derives from Cyperus rotundus, a plant commonly known as purple nutsedge, in which the...