Test your wine knowledge with quiz questions from our expert.
True or False: Australia (along with a few of its various wine regions) is home to some of the Earth's oldest soils.
True
According to eHow.com, Aussie soils are millions of years old and therefore are among the oldest in the world. Australian clay soil has reached this ripe old age by avoiding the Ice Ages that invigorated soils in Europe over ten thousand years ago (the harsh climatic conditions in some Australian areas has also aided this preservation by preventing large amounts of land development).
Where was the first commercial grapevine nursery in the U.S. established?
Montgomery County in Pennsylvania
The nation's first commercial grapevine nursery was located in Montgomery County (in southeastern Pennsylvania). PA now farms approximately 14,000 acres of grapes, making it the 4th largest area nationally in the amount of grapes grown. The state also ranks 7th overall in the U.S. in wine production.
The U.S. state of Colorado has a history of wine production and grape-growing dating back to the 1800s. Since 1990, the number of wineries in Colorado has increased by a factor of...?
20
Colorado now has approximately 100 wineries, most of them established within the last 20 years, and primarily finding fine wine success with the cooler-climate European grape varieties Riesling, Gewurztraminer and Cabernet Franc.
In the 1880s, which U.S. state was producing more than 2,000,000 US gallons of wine per year?
Missouri
Missouri was once the center of U.S. wine production until the industry was largely shut down by Prohibition. Missouri wines at the time were international award-winners, and were early adopters of the native Norton grape variety.
Which U.S. Founding Father once told Washington Judge William Johnson that wines from the Scuppernong grape “would be distinguished on the best tables of Europe for its fine aroma, and chrystalline transparence?”
Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson, who appreciated fine European wine and long toiled (mostly unsuccessfully) to make fine wine of his own at his Virginia Monticello estate, apparently was a homer when it came to predicting the potential of fine wine in America. His generous feelings about the future of Scuppernong (which is largely viewed as not normally being able to create fine wines) seem to be based on wines made from the grape at the time in North Carolina.
Racking is the process of taking clear wine and removing it off of its sediment when aging, usually from barrel to barrel. It's a labor-intensive process, and results in more barrels that then have to be cleaned (requiring yet even more labor!), but one that provides some aeration during the move (which is thought to benefit the potential complexity of some fine wines).
Winemakers and grape growers often use sugar ripeness to help determine when grapes are ready to roll for picking and making wine. What scale is used to measure sugar ripeness in the vineyard?
All of the above
Confusingly, a common standard for measuring grape sugar ripeness across the winemaking world has not yet been achieved. The U.S. and Australia have largely adopted Brix, in France the Baumé is used, and Germany and Austria favor the Oechsle and KMW. Like Fahrenheit and Centigrade scales for temperature, the different sugar ripeness scales can be converted to one another (and all of them to what they're designed to primarily do, which is estimate a finished wine's potential alcohol percentage).
Rosé wine is made in many forms. It can be made exactly as a white wine but using red wine grapes ("vin gris"), as a result of an "abbreviated" red wine vinification with skin contact, or (more commonly in fine wine, and usually with superior results) using the "saignée" method of bleeding off red wine juice to finish a normal fermentation period without further skin contact. Red and white wine can also be blended together to make rosé, though the results are often poor (that last method is actually forbidden in most EU wine producing areas).
Red wine grapes are sometimes placed in vats in entire bunches (stalks and all) under a cover of carbon dioxide, eventually bursting and then fermenting the grapes. Do you know what this method of fermentation is called?
Carbonic maceration
This process is referred to as Carbonic maceration, most famously associated with the production of Beaujolais Nouveau. It results in wines with extracted color but very little tannin, and usually gives off telltale aromas of bananas and cinnamon spices.
Sometimes good wines just go... bad! Meaning, of course, that chemical faults can often ruin an otherwise perfectly good bottle of vino. If a wine smells of rotten eggs, it has been compromised by what compound?
Hydrogen Sulfide
Rotten eggs? Yes, and it's... well, it's really disgusting when you find it in wine. Say hello to Hydrogen Sulfide. During fermentation, yeasts that convert sugars into alcohol need nitrogen, and if they can’t find enough of it in the grape must they’ll get it from any amino acids present, releasing this stinky gas in the process (and ruining your vino).
