A Little Wine Miscellany Trivia Quiz

Answer: To remove sediment before serving.

Modern wines throw much less sediment than those of as little as thirty years ago, but wines (especially reds) of great bottle age still produce precipitants that need removal. Many young reds do benefit from aeration, but drinking wine so young is a modern tendency.

Answer: your hands

There is enough pressure in a bottle of Champagne to launch an uncontrolled cork at nearly 400 miles per hour (640 kph), so it is very dangerous to use any tools, especially a corkscrew, to open one. Loosen the wire cage around the cork, grip the cage and cork firmly in your strong hand, and gently rotate the bottle with your off hand.

In seconds the bottle will open itself. Yes, you've seen Champagne opened with a sword, the technique is called "sabrage", trust me it's for experts only!

Answer: still, sparkling, and fortified

Apertif and digestif are uses for wines, often the added alcohol fortified sort. Wine colors run from pale green to golden brown, with every shade of yellow, pink, and red in between. Good, bad, and ugly really only apply if your surname is Eastwood, VanCleef, or Wallach.

Answer: S. cerevisiae

S. cerevisiae, often called "brewer's yeast", was originally isolated from the skins of wine grapes, and is also the yeast used by bakers the world over. Beer in Latin is "cerevisiam" and in Spanish "cerveza". Other yeasts have their uses, too. The S. boulardi mentioned above acts as a probiotic.

Answer: la flor

The blanket of la flor ("the flower" in Spanish) permits the development of the most delicate of Sherries, fino. Less or no flor, and you get another grade of Sherry. La cabija is "the blanket" in Spanish, "la levadura" is yeast. La blanqueta is I believe "Spanglish", a formation from "blanket" in English.

Answer: the city of Oporto, Portugal

Oporto is the English rendition of the city's name, called Porto in Portuguese. The city is home to the Port Lodges, the mercantile houses that have controlled the wine for centuries. An uncapitalized porto means port, of course, and the wine goes out to the world through Porto's port on the Douro River.

Answer: from French "pineau" meaning "little pine" for the cone shaped fruit clusters.

The wonderful, if sometimes difficult to grow, pinot family produces grapes of various colors; green called white or blanc in French, steel blue called gray or gris in French, grigio in Italian, and black or noir. Whatever the color the distinctive pine cone shaped grape cluster is displayed. Incidentally, there is no district called Pinotage, it's a grape developed in South Africa.

Answer: muscat

Modern genetics now seems to indicate either a Grecian or Persian origin for the grape called muscat (moscato in Italian). The story remains charming enough that names will not change. If you chose Arabica, coffee may be more your thing than wine. Basmati is a variety of rice, and if you chose amphipolis, you might be watching too many re-runs of Xena!

Answer: evaluating wines in dark cellars.

In the candlelit bowels of an underground wine cellar, light was at a premium, and since a wine's color is indicative of its quality, the tastevin's various decorations allowed the candlelight to show the color against the silver backdrop. The advent of the electric torch/flashlight almost doomed the tastevin to extinction. Fortunately, organizations like Burgundy's Confrerie des Chevaliers du Tastevin will keep that from happening.

Answer: a wine with alcohol added

The reason for "fortifying" or adding alcohol to a wine is to kill the yeast and keep the grape's natural sweetness intact. Usually an unaged grape brandy is used. Many fortified wines are capable of long aging, but that is not the purpose.