Test your wine knowledge with quiz questions from our expert.
Prugnolo, Nerino, Morellino and Calabrese are all synonyms for what Italian red wine grape?
Sangiovese
Several clones of Sangiovese are used to make wines throughout Italy. Chianti is probably the best known red wine made from the variety, but it is also used to make Brunello di Montalcino and Vino Nobile de Montepulciano, in quite different styles.
Continuing our focus on cepage aliases, which white wine grape is less commonly known as Quefort and as Steen?
Chenin Blanc
Chenin Blanc, the principal grape of Vouvray in France's Loire Valley, has a plethora of alternative names, and is widely referred to as Steen in South Africa. Most of its other synonyms (Quefort, Pineau de la Loire, Plant de Breze, Blanc de Anjou...) are used almost exclusively within France itself.
Can you identify the most common name for the grape also known as Tinto Madrid and Tinto Fino?
Tempranillo
Tempranillo, best-known as the main grape in Spanish Rioja red wines, has at least fifteen synonyms - many of them being used just within the Iberian peninsula. It also goes by Tinto Madrid, Tinto Fino, Tinto Roriz (used in many Portuguese wines), Cencibel, Tinto de la Rioja, Ull de Llebre and Tinto de Toro (among others!).
The Champagne region is home to many storied brands with unique histories, including some that have become household names. You probably know many of the famous few brand names, but do you know how many grape growers actually own the vast majority of Champagne vineyards?
19,000
According to the Center for Wine Origins, while the ten largest Champagne houses account for over half of the region's sales, they don't own the majority of the vineyards. About 19,000 small grape growers account for 90% of the ownership of vineyards in the Champagne region, one of the reasons why cooperatives, merchant houses and negociants play such major roles in getting those grapes into their final bottles.
Champagne production is one of the most highly-regulated in all of the wine world, with each bottle receiving a registration number for its producer issued by the region's governing body, and each label receiving a designation code that represents how the wine was made. What Champagne label code signifies that a Champagne was produced independently by an individual estate / grape grower?
RM
The small RM you can find on some Champagne labels stands for "Recoltant-Manipulants" and designates that the Champagne was made by an individual estate grape-grower, who produced the wine independently using a minimum of 95% of their own grapes. The other codes have meanings also:
NM = A Negociant-manipulant, or shipper, produced the Champagne from their own and from purchased grapes.
CM = Cooperative de Manipulation, a Champagne produced by an association of growers who produce and market their wines collectively.
RC = Recoltant-Cooperateur, a grower who produces Champagne at a Cooperative facility.
MA = Marque d'Acheteur, Champagne sold by a third party who purchases it and rebrands it but isn't involved in its production.
Continuing our Champagne theme this month, many wine lovers know that Champagne is often a blend of different grape varieties, but fewer know that it is usually blended across vintages in order to produce a "house" style with a consistent taste profile year to year. The exception to the blended vintages is, of course, vintage-dated Champagne, which is produced in exceptional years only from grapes harvested during that vintage. What percentage of total Champagne production is vintage-dated?
Less than 10 percent
Vintage Champagne may get most of the glory and publicity, but it's certainly not the majority of production - not by a long shot. According to the Center for Wine Origins, Non Vintage blends account for over 90 percent of total Champagne production. So there's good reason for you to think that the bottle of vintage Champers aging in your cellar is special, because it is!
Many of you were ringing in the new year with Champagne, but do you know who might have invented sparkling wine, in terms of deliberately trying to make still wines get fizzy? It almost certainly wasn't Champagne icon Dom Perignon, who likely tried to prevent his still wines from fermenting for a second time in their bottles, thus causing the bubbly action (and exploding a not-insignificant number of those bottles!). According to award-winning wine writer Tom Stevenson, evidence suggests which country may have been the inventors of sparkling wine?
England
In The Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia, Tom Stevenson makes a compelling argument for England being the home of sparkling wine invention (in terms of deliberately trying to induce bubbles in still French wines via secondary fermentation in bottle). While the French were still trying to keep their Champagne from developing bubbles in the early 1700s, English dramatists were mentioning sparkling Champagne in plays dated from the 1600s; and, according to Stevenson, the English had not only the technology to induce a secondary fermentation, they also had the means for keeping those bubbles safely contained - namely, corks (something the French wouldn't use widely until about 130 years later)
