Test your wine knowledge with quiz questions from our expert.
Drinking tap water in between sips of wine isn’t a good idea, if you want to ensure that you don’t contaminate the taste of the wine that you’re drinking. Even small amounts of chlorine, present in most tap water, can do what to the taste of wine in your
All of the above
Chlorine is a disinfectant, and can significantly diminish our perception of a wine’s fruitiness. This effect in turn increases our perception of a wine’s tannins (adding bitterness) and its acids (causing it to taste unbalanced). Fortunately, when this is caused by drinking the small amount of chlorine in tap water, the effect is temporary.
True or False: Almost all wines contain residual sugar, even if they are fermented to “dryness?”
True
Wine grapes contain several types of sugars, but all are in relatively low number apart from fructose and glucose, which are six-carbon sugars. During fermentation, the yeasts will transform most of the fructose and glucose into alcohol, leaving the other sugars of different carbon structures relatively untouched. Those sugars will be present in the finished wine, even if it is vinified “dry,” though usually at levels that we find undetectable (sorry, for those of you with a sweet tooth).
Which insects likely play a crucial role in transmitting fermentation yeasts to grapes?
Wasps
Research form the University of Florence has shown that saccharomyces cerevisias, the yeasts largely responsible for wine fermentation, overwinters in the guts of wasp queens, who pass it on to her larvae when feeding them. Those wasps, when mature, also carry the yeast and can in turn impart yeast cells (which are not airborne, and thus require a proxy to move them) into grapes when they bite grape skins while on the vine, thus potentially playing a crucial role in wine fermentation.
Sherlock Holmes cracks part of the case in "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange" by noticing the details of what wine-related object?
All of the above
In "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange" the famous detective notices that a half-drunk bottle of high-quality wine was opened using the short corkscrew a multiplex knife rather than a much longer corkscrew found in a nearby drawer, thus ruining the long cork (a sign of the wine's potential high quality). One of three wine glasses at the crime scene also has a large amount of sediment in it, leading Holmes to surmise that there were actually less then three perpetrators drinking at the scene.
The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was a popular radio show in the 1930s and 1940s. What wine company sponsored the show?
Petri Wine
Escalon, California based Petri Wine sponsored The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes from 1939 to 1946, after which it was replaced by the (probably decidedly less tasty) Kreml Hair Tonic for Men. The show was quite popular in its time, even being broadcasted overseas through the Armed Forces Radio Service during World War II.
What wine might have been the favorite of Sherlock Holmes?
Port
There is very little mention of the famous detective's drinking habits in the Sherlock Holmes canon. While he does enjoy a glass of Toakaji in "His Last Bow," Holmes might have had more Port than anything else. He drinks glasses of Port in three stories, "The Gloria Scott," "The Sign of Four," and "The Adventure of the Creeping Man," a total which may make Port Holmes' most often-sipped wine.
In the 2009 Film Sherlock Holmes, the title character refers to which Bordeaux First growth wine as "a comet vintage?"
Château Margaux
In the film, the character Irene Adler temporarily delays Sherlock Holmes by getting him to drink a glass of wine from a drugged bottle of 1858 Château Margaux. In the scene, Holmes tangentially discusses his fascination that "an astronomical event" (in this case, the Donati Comet sighted that year) "could effect the quality" of a harvest.
In 2007, a Riesling from which Finger Lakes wine producer took home the only gold medal awarded to an American wine in the Riesling Du Monde (Riesling in the World) Wine Competition in Strasbourg, France?
Fox Run Vineyards
Fox Run Vineyards' 2005 Riesling took home the only U.S. Gold medal awarded in France's 2007 Riesling Du Monde, a competition that featured over 500 Rieslings submitted from 12 different countries.
When were the first vines known to be planted in the Finger Lakes?
1829
While the Fingers Lake AVA wasn't officially established until October 1, 1982, grapevines have called the area home for a much longer time frame. The Reverend William Bostwick is believed to have planted the first vineyard in the region when he decided that his rectory garden in Hammondsport, NY would make a good spot for vines.
True or False: The Fingers Lake American Viticultural Area covers over one million acres of farmland?
True
According to the recently-released book American Wine, The Finger Lakes AVA covers 2.5 million acres across nearly thirteen counties, only about 9,000 acres of which are planted as vineyards.
