Let's All Go to the Winery Trivia Quiz

Answer: Crackers

Eating something with little flavor will cleanse the palate and leave the mouth free of flavor. Eating a food with a strong flavor could interfere with the taste of wine. Wearing perfume can also inhibit taste. If you plan to drink the wines you taste, it is a good idea to eat before tasting as it will slow the absorption of alcohol into the blood stream.

Answer: have a stuffy nose

While examining color and even touching the wine are important to some tasters, the sense of smell is critical to tasting because tasting is all but impossible if you cannot smell (try plugging your nose and eating).

Answer: Whites to reds

Some tasters find it best for the palate to try the white and sparkling wines first before progressing to the red ones, so they will taste wine that way, regardless of residual sugar level. This order goes: sparkling, light white, heavy white, rosé/blush, light red, heavy red, sweet/dessert.

When having a formal dinner, this is generally the order in which you would drink wines. However, nothing bad will happen if you taste wines in any order.

Answer: Purple

Rosé is also called blush or pink. While some wines are purplish in color, they are classified as reds. White wines are yellow, orange, or even yellow-green, blush/pink/rosé wines are pink in color, and reds can be red, purple, or even brown. Brown, orange, gold, yellow-green, and dark yellow colors often indicate an aged wine.

Answer: It releases the bouquet, or aroma, of the wine

The scent allows you to get an early sense of what the wine will taste like. It could also help you determine whether something is wrong with the wine, i.e. if it's stale or was corked improperly. However, as I learned from experience, you should not swirl sparkling wines--swirling interferes with the carbonation, rendering the wine flat.

Some tasters also swirl to see if the wine has "legs" (shows streaks on the glass wall), which might indicate a wine's sugar level or show whether the wine is well-balanced (however, it doesn't always).

Answer: Open your mouth to aerate the wine

As long as you know you won't irritate the people around you, because it will make a smacking or slurping noise, opening your mouth and sucking in air will intensify the flavor. Some tasters, if they don't want to open their mouths, breathe deeply through their noses instead.

Answer: Tannins

Coffee, tea, beer, spices, and many fruits also contain tannins. A well-balanced wine contains the right mix of alcohol, tannins, residual sugar, and acidity.

Answer: Austere

Austere wines are rather tough. Smooth, silky, and velvety wines all have a soft texture.

Answer: It is extremely sweet

Ice wine is so sweet, with a residual sugar level of 20% or higher, because it is made from grapes frozen on the vine. Only a few drops of wine can be culled from each of these grapes, which makes ice wine expensive (at a winery in my town, a 375 ml bottle goes for $75 normally, but that is on the higher price end).

Many wineries in the United States charge for tasting it, a charge that is reimbursed if you purchase a bottle.

Answer: False

Tasters use the word "taste" instead of "drink" because most of them don't actually drink the wine. When tasting a dozen of wines in a day, tasters spit out most or all of the wine after tasting it so that they won't become drunk. The spittoons contain sawdust to absorb the wine so that it doesn't splash back.