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• Classic-Fiction

(a) the number of fluid ounces in a standard wine-bottle

(b) the metric equivalent of that amount in terms of litres.

For good measure (ha ha ha) explain

(c) what an American means by a fifth of liquor.

5. What is meant when a bottle of wine is said to be corked?

6. The following are all types of—what?

Cabernet Sauvignon Muscat

Riesling Gamay Sylvaner.

7. Three well-known French wines. Briefly describe each (e.g. “a dry white wine”) and name the region where it is made; extra marks for further precision. In this and the following two questions the main or usual product is meant, so if a lot of red and a little white is made the answer is “red.”

(a) Barsac

(b) Sancerre

(c) Beaune.

8. Three Italians. Proceed as before, but naming the places will probably be harder, so double any marks you get in this way.

(a) Asti Spumante

(b) Valpolicella

(c) Frascati.

9. Three from—elsewhere. Double bonuses again.

(a) Rioja

(b) retsina

(c) vinho verde.

10. It has been said (no doubt untruly) that some show-off Japanese businessmen buy the most expensive bottle of claret they can find, take it home and stand it on the mantelpiece. Apart from the showing-off, what is ill-advised about this practice?

WINE — INTERMEDIATE

Here is a further selection of miscellaneous questions about wine, some historical or literary, some modestly technical. I excluded with reluctance several that appeared in my first draft, such as the one asking for a definition of a wine-table—a semicircular or horse-shoe-shaped table with metal wells for bottles and ice and sometimes a revolving wine-carriage. The drinkers sat round the longer edge. Good to know, perhaps, but unen-livening to be asked about.

1. Which famous poet referred repeatedly to the “wine-dark sea,” and what is the significance of that?

2. Can you give a date for the first mention of wine in (a sort of ) English?

3. What was the revolutionary seventeenth-century discovery that made possible wine as we know it today?

4. In the 1860s and later a new species of aphis or aphid or plant-louse attacked and laid waste many European vine- yards. Give its name and say how the situation was (partly) retrieved.

5. Climate, weather and soil are all obviously important in the first stage of wine-making. Describe a fourth factor.

6. Is vin rosé given its colour by leaving the (black) grape-skins in the must (fermenting juice) a shorter time than for red wine, or by just mixing red and white wine?

7. When the wine-grower has got his grape-juice ready for fermentation, how does he cause that process to start?

8. Nearly all sweet white wines are made by checking fermentation, so that some of the sugar stays as sugar instead of becoming alcohol. How does the wine-maker do that?

9. Red wine goes with red meat, white with fish and white meat. True or false?

10. What was the precious trade secret bequeathed by the dying wine-maker to his assembled family?

WINE—ADVANCED

It is impossible that, among the many thousands trying to solve these quizzes, there should not be some few who know more than I do about one or other of the topics covered. Nowhere is this more likely to be so than in the field of wine. For reasons too boring to go into, my expertise there has never been of a very high order. In the present quiz particularly, some questions may appear too easy, others too difficult to offer a sporting chance of a solution. Well, there we are.

1. Let us imagine a wine-tasting, nothing elaborate, just someone out to try an unfamiliar wine. What information can he gain by noting the appearance of the wine in the glass before him?

2. I will not ask you what the taster might notice when sniffing at the wine in his glass, because you cannot be trusted not to start using words like flinty or forthcoming or dumb to describe various smells, so just stick to mentioning a couple of olfactory signs that all is not well.

3. You are undoubtedly aware that acids are most important in the production of wine, being essential to fermentation, also required in the finished article to impart