Some spice with your Paso Robles wine? Jill Gubesch gives Jennifer Fiedler at Wine Spectator Magazine some good advice on wine pairings for peppery Mexican dishes.

Jill Gubesch, a sommelier of Chicago restaurants Frontera Grill and Topolobampo, has spent the last 11 years honing the art of blending great wines with spicy Mexican dishes and defeating the stereotype of Coronas and quesadillas. What she’s found: Chiles and wine actually go good together.

Jill tells Jennifer Fiedler of Wine Spectator Magazine the reason why:

As it turns out, grapes and chiles have similar flavors. Jill explains that “for example, the pasilla chile has this bittersweet chocolate, espresso profile, so you think about wines that have that as well. It has a little bit of tannin, too, so I try to find richer, rounder, softer tannins in the wine, or fruit-forward wines to balance those tannins. Some of the wines that go with straight pasilla sauces are Zinfandels, which surprises a lot of people because pasilla chiles have what we call a building heat, so as you go through the dish, it gets hotter and hotter. People say, “Stay away from high-alcohol wines, they’re going to make the dish hotter.” But something like a high-alcohol Zin with forward fruit really balances that heat in a beautiful way.”

When enjoying a good Mexican dish, try Hearthstone’s 2007 fruit-forward Profundo.

Please stop by our Hearthstone Vineyard & Winery Tasting Room in Paso Robles or check out the wine club online.