144 Fun Facts About Wine

Which sweet-wine estate was the only 'Premier Cru Supérieur' in the 1855 Bordeaux classification?

Château d'Yquem alone was ranked Premier Cru Supérieur in 1855; when a harvest falls short it sells no wine under its own name at all, as it did with the whole 2012 crop.

Which French term treats a wine's months between fermentation and bottling like a child's upbringing?

Élevage, French for 'raising', is also the word French farmers use for rearing livestock; in the cellar it covers the barrel ageing and filtering between fermentation and bottling.

Which widow at the head of a sparkling-wine house is credited with inventing the riddling table?

Madame Clicquot (Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin), widowed at 27, devised the riddling table in the early 1800s: bottles rest neck-down and are turned until the sediment slides to the cork for removal.

Which grape variety is the principal component of Chianti, the classic red of Tuscany?

Sangiovese is the backbone of Chianti: producers were once obliged to blend in white grapes, but an all-Sangiovese wine has been legal since the 1990s and Chianti Classico banned white grapes in 2006.

Wines from which region beat top French bottles in both red and white at the 1976 'Judgment of Paris' tasting?

Napa County supplied both winners, Stag's Leap's 1973 Cabernet and Chateau Montelena's 1973 Chardonnay; the judges were French and tasted blind, and one, Odette Kahn, demanded her scorecard back.

Which renowned sweet white wine of Bordeaux is made from grapes shrivelled by a beneficial mould?

Sauternes owes its mould to autumn mists that form where the cool Ciron meets the warmer Garonne; the afternoon sun then dries the grapes, so they shrivel instead of spoiling.

The terraced Douro Valley, demarcated in 1756 for its famous fortified wine, lies in which country?

Portugal's Douro Valley is the home of Port: a royal charter of 1756 fixed its boundaries, among the earliest drawn for any wine region, and spirit added mid-fermentation keeps the wine sweet.

Pinotage, a cross of Pinot Noir and Cinsault, was created in which country?

Pinotage was bred in South Africa in 1925 by Abraham Perold at Stellenbosch University, crossing Pinot Noir with Cinsault, then known locally as Hermitage.

What common wine fault is often described as having aromas of damp cardboard, mold, or a musty basement?

Cork taint comes from a compound in contaminated corks that some tasters detect at a few parts per trillion; screwcaps, now the most common closure in Australia and New Zealand, sharply cut the risk.

Which thin-skinned, fussy red grape makes the famous reds of the Côte d'Or in eastern France?

Pinot Noir's tightly packed bunches invite rot and disease, which is why growers call it the heartbreak grape; Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc are simply its colour mutations.

What do winemakers call the grey mould that shrivels ripe grapes for luscious sweet wines?

Noble rot is the winemaker's name for the fungus when misty mornings and dry afternoons let it shrivel grapes without spoiling them; in persistently wet weather it turns to grey rot and ruins the crop.

Which clarifying step adds an agent such as egg white to wine to bind and sink hazy particles?

Fining agents such as egg white, milk protein and isinglass, made from fish bladders, cling to the haze and sink with it, which is why not every wine is vegan.

Which red wine component binds to saliva proteins, causing a drying, puckering feel?

Tannins, the same compounds that make stewed tea astringent, bind to saliva proteins and help red wine age; protein-rich foods such as steak and hard cheese blunt their grip.

What is the space of air between the wine and the cork in a bottle called?

Ullage is the air gap between wine and cork; the level drops as a bottle ages, and a large ullage warns buyers of evaporation or a failing cork.

What do winemakers call steeping grape skins in the juice to draw out colour?

Maceration is the skin contact that gives red wine its colour and grip: a brief soak is enough for a rosé, while big reds may stay on their skins well after fermentation has finished.

What does the vintage year printed on a wine label record?

When the grapes were harvested is what a vintage records; many sparkling wines carry no year at all, because their makers blend several harvests to keep a house style from one year to the next.

Which winemaking process softens a wine's sharp acidity and can give Chardonnay a 'buttery' note?

Malolactic fermentation converts sharp malic acid to softer lactic acid; lactic bacteria rather than yeast do the work, and the by-product diacetyl is the compound used to flavour buttered popcorn.

What French term describes leaving wine on its dead yeast cells after fermentation for richness and texture?

Sur lie, 'on the yeast deposit', means the wine is not drawn off its spent yeast; some Loire whites print the words on the label, and the same contact gives long-aged sparkling wines their bready notes.

Which Italian region produces Barolo and Barbaresco from the Nebbiolo grape?

Piedmont's Langhe hills sit in fog on autumn mornings, so growers keep the best hilltop sites for late-ripening Nebbiolo, which is often not picked until late October.

What is the technique called in which Prosecco gets its bubbles from a second fermentation in pressurised tanks?

The Charmat method, known in Italy as the Martinotti method, runs the second fermentation in a sealed tank instead of in each bottle, which makes Prosecco cheaper to produce and less yeasty in taste.

Which German wine region is famed for Riesling grown on steep slate slopes above a winding river?

The Mosel's steep riverside vineyards sit on slate that stores daytime heat, and its Rieslings are typically light, high in acidity and low in alcohol.

Which northern Rhône grape goes by a different name in Australia, where it is the most planted red?

Syrah/Shiraz is one grape with two names: Shiraz in Australia, where it is the most planted red and was also called Hermitage until the late 1980s, when that French place name became protected.

What is a 'puncheon' in the context of wine aging?

A puncheon holds roughly 450 liters — about twice a standard 225-liter Bordeaux barrique — so it gives the wine a gentler dose of oak.

Which white grape varietal is primarily used to produce Sancerre wine from the Loire Valley, France?

Sauvignon Blanc now fills Sancerre's white wines, yet for most of the 19th century the district grew mostly red grapes; whites took over when the ruined vineyards were replanted.

Cloudy Bay Vineyards, whose 1985 release won New Zealand wine acclaim, is in which region?

Cloudy Bay sits in Marlborough at the top of the South Island, where commercial vineyards only arrived in 1973, when Montana planted the first large blocks; the winery's acclaim came just twelve years later.

Which bone-dry white from around Nantes, a classic partner for oysters, is made from the Melon de Bourgogne grape?

Muscadet comes from Melon de Bourgogne, a Burgundian grape that took over the vineyards around Nantes after the hard freeze of 1709 killed most of the region's vines.

Which Hungarian sweet wine, "Wine of Kings, King of Wines", is made from botrytised grapes?

Tokaji Aszú was traditionally graded in puttonyos, the large baskets of shrivelled, botrytised berries added to each cask of base wine: the more baskets, the sweeter the wine.

French agronomist Michel Pouget took Malbec vines in the 19th century to which country, now the grape's adopted home?

Argentina owes its Malbec to French agronomist Michel Pouget; back in France, where the grape is also called Côt, a 1956 frost killed most of the vines and Bordeaux largely gave it up, leaving Argentina its stronghold.

What is 'Brix' a measurement of in winemaking?

Sugar content in grapes is what Brix measures: growers read it with a refractometer to time the harvest, since each degree ferments to roughly half a percent of alcohol.

Which viticulture follows Rudolf Steiner's ideas, timing work to an astrological calendar?

Biodynamic viticulture follows Rudolf Steiner's 1924 lectures: growers bury manure-filled cow horns over winter, spray the resulting preparation on the vines, and treat the farm as a single living organism.

What winemaking technique pumps fermenting juice from the tank bottom over the floating cap to extract colour?

Remontage, 'pumping over' in English, is needed because carbon dioxide lifts the skins into a floating cap; splashing juice back over it keeps the skins wet so colour goes on leaching out.

What is the breakdown of dead yeast cells in bottle-aged sparkling wine called?

Autolysis, the slow self-digestion of spent yeast, releases compounds that give long-aged sparkling wines their brioche, toast and nutty notes.

Which aromatic white grape is known for intense perfumed notes of lychee and rose petal?

Gewürztraminer's lychee scent is no figure of speech: the wine and the fruit share aroma compounds. The name joins Gewürz, German for spice, to Traminer, after the Tyrolean village of Tramin.

Which Spanish system ages Sherry by blending it down through tiers of barrels?

Solera barrels are never emptied: bottles are drawn only from the oldest tier, which is topped up from younger ones, so every bottling blends many vintages and some systems have run for over a century.

Which Spanish wine region is the home of the Albariño grape?

Rías Baixas in Galicia is the home of Albariño; vines there are traditionally trained on high granite-post pergolas to keep the thick-skinned bunches clear of the damp ground.

What is the main grape varietal used in red Bordeaux wines?

Merlot is Bordeaux's most planted grape, well ahead of the Cabernets that made the Médoc famous; it leads the blends of Pomerol and Saint-Émilion on the Right Bank.

What is the term for a concentrated, sweet dessert wine made from grapes that have frozen on the vine?

Icewine is pressed while the berries are still frozen, so the water stays behind as ice and only a little intensely sweet juice runs off; harvests often happen at night in mid-winter.

Which grape makes the great white wines of Puligny-Montrachet and Meursault?

Chardonnay is the grape of white Puligny-Montrachet and Meursault; DNA work at UC Davis showed this prized variety is a cross of Pinot and Gouais Blanc, once scorned as the grape of the peasants.

What is opening a bottle of sparkling wine by striking its neck with a sword called?

Sabrage slides a sabre up the seam of the bottle to knock off the lip and cork together; legend credits Napoleon's hussars, who celebrated victories by opening bottles from horseback.

Which grape variety is the foundation of red Rioja?

Tempranillo is named for ripening early (temprano in Spanish), several weeks ahead of most Spanish red grapes; elsewhere in Iberia it goes by Tinto Fino, Cencibel and Tinta Roriz.

Under Spanish law, 'sherry' must come from the 'Sherry Triangle' in which Andalusian province?

All three corners of the triangle — Jerez de la Frontera, Sanlúcar de Barrameda and El Puerto de Santa María — lie in Cádiz province; 'sherry' is an anglicisation of the old spelling Xerez.

Which tiny vine pest devastated 19th-century European vineyards, forcing growers to graft vines onto American rootstock?

Phylloxera is a tiny sap-sucking aphid relative that kills European vines by attacking their roots; grafting them onto resistant American rootstock became the standard defence and still is.

Which sparkling wine, mostly made around Sant Sadurní d'Anoia, must ferment a second time in bottle?

Cava takes its name from the Catalan for cellar; Spanish producers adopted the term to set their bottle-fermented wine apart from French bubbly, and Sant Sadurní d'Anoia in Penedès hosts the biggest houses.

What is the meaning of 'dry' when describing a wine?

Scant residual sugar: yeast has turned nearly all the grape sugar into alcohol. The word misleads on sparkling-wine labels, where 'Extra Dry' is actually sweeter than 'Brut'.

Which bottle size holds 1.5 litres, exactly twice a standard bottle of wine?

A magnum holds 1.5 litres, exactly two standard bottles; the word is simply Latin for 'large', while the bigger sizes above it borrow the names of biblical kings such as Jeroboam.

Which fortified island wine is deliberately heated as it ages, in a process called estufagem, to mimic long sea voyages?

Madeira shippers noticed the wine improved after crossing the tropics in ships' holds, so they began storing it in hot rooms called estufas. Once opened it keeps almost indefinitely.

Which red grape, at about 341,000 hectares in 2015, is the world's most planted wine grape?

Cabernet Sauvignon, a natural cross of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc, is planted in dozens of countries, led by China, France, Chile and the United States.

Which country is widely recognized as the historical birthplace of winemaking?

Georgia holds the oldest evidence: residue on pottery from sites south of Tbilisi dates winemaking to roughly 6000 BCE, and its qvevri method of fermenting in buried clay vessels was inscribed by UNESCO in 2013.

What is the term for allowing wine to "breathe" to enhance its aromas and flavors?

Aeration exposes an opened wine to air, letting some aroma compounds volatilise and softening a young red, though a few swirls in the glass do as much for most wines.

Treading grapes underfoot was the age-old way to carry out which early step of winemaking?

Crushing only splits the skins so the juice starts to flow; a few small producers still tread by foot, but most wineries now feed the bunches through a mechanical crusher-destemmer.

What is the neutral grape spirit added mid-fermentation to make port sweet called?

Aguardente goes in while much of the grape sugar is still unfermented: it stops the yeast, keeps the wine sweet and lifts the alcohol to around 20%. The same trick makes vin doux naturel in France.

Which technique makes sparkling wine via a second fermentation in the bottle it is sold in?

The traditional method adds sugar and yeast to a finished still wine before sealing it, so the carbon dioxide from that second fermentation is trapped as bubbles in the very bottle sold.

What animal appears on the neck seal that marks a bottle as Chianti Classico?

Legend says a black rooster settled a medieval border dispute between Florence and Siena by crowing before dawn, letting Florence's rider get a head start.

Which Greek island grows Assyrtiko in low basket-trained vines on volcanic soil?

Santorini's Assyrtiko vines are woven into ground-hugging baskets that shield the grapes from the island's strong winds and fierce sun.

Which compound causes an estimated 80–85% of cork-taint cases in wine?

Trichloroanisole (TCA) forms when chlorine compounds meet moulds living in cork bark or wooden pallets; some tasters detect it at a few parts per trillion, which is why cork producers abandoned chlorine bleaching.

What is adding sugar to grape juice to raise the finished wine's alcohol called?

Chaptalization is legal in cool regions such as Alsace and England but banned in warmer ones like Italy and California, where ripeness is rarely a problem.

Which tier of Italian wine law requires a government tasting and a numbered neck seal?

DOCG, Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita, is Italy's top tier: each bottle carries a numbered state seal and the wine must pass a tasting panel; Barolo, Barbaresco and Brunello di Montalcino were among the first, in 1980.

Tuscany's dominant red grape takes its name from a Latin phrase meaning the 'blood' of which god?

Sanguis Jovis became the grape's name; it is the backbone of Chianti and the sole variety in Brunello di Montalcino.

Which French wine region surrounds Reims, the cathedral city where the kings of France were crowned?

Champagne's trade is centred on Reims and Épernay; centuries of coronations at Reims helped build the reputation of the local wine long before it sparkled.

Which Portuguese wine, bottled young and lightly spritzy, comes from the Minho region?

Vinho Verde means 'green wine' in the sense of young, not the colour: it is released within three to six months of the harvest, often with a light spritz and only around 8.5-11% alcohol.

Which grape, long France's most planted and still a Languedoc workhorse, is known in Rioja as Mazuelo?

Carignan, called Mazuelo in Rioja and Cariñena elsewhere in Spain, was France's most planted grape until around 2000, after growers were paid to pull up its heavy-cropping vines.

The Loire appellation Vouvray is devoted almost entirely to which white grape?

Chenin Blanc's high natural acidity lets Vouvray from good vintages age for decades, in styles from bone-dry to sweet moelleux and sparkling.

Which Italian grape, renamed in 2009, goes into Prosecco?

Glera was itself called Prosecco until 2009, when Italy renamed the grape so that Prosecco could be protected as a place name; the wine may still include up to 15% of other varieties.

Which province in the eastern Andean foothills is the heart of South American Malbec?

Mendoza's vineyards sit at 600-1,100 metres in the shadow of Aconcagua, among the highest in the world; the land is near-desert, so the vines live on Andean meltwater led through irrigation channels.

What process slowly pours wine into another container to separate it from sediment?

Decanting separates older reds and vintage ports from the deposit they throw: the bottle is stood upright, then poured slowly into a decanter, stopping when sediment reaches the neck.

Châteauneuf-du-Pape is a famous appellation of which French wine region?

Châteauneuf-du-Pape, 'the Pope's new castle', lies in the southern Rhône near Avignon, where the popes held court in the 14th century; Grenache leads its famously long list of permitted grapes.

What term describes the soil, climate and topography that give a wine its character?

Terroir is why French wines are traditionally labelled by place and not by grape: the appellation system assumes the site shapes the taste.

Which spoilage microbe gives affected red wines aromas of Band-Aids, barnyard and horse stable?

Brettanomyces, 'Brett' for short, divides winemakers: at low levels some welcome its funk as complexity, and a whiff of it is part of the signature of certain famous old-school reds.

Which flavours does ageing in new oak barrels typically add to a wine?

Vanilla and spice notes come from the wood itself: toasting the inside of the barrel brings out vanillin along with a smoky compound that smells like oil of cloves.

What phenomenon creates the 'legs' or 'tears' that drip down a wine glass after swirling?

The Marangoni effect: alcohol evaporates faster than water from the film on the glass, so surface tension pulls liquid up until it beads and runs back down; prominent legs say nothing about quality.

Which red-winemaking step, separating liquid from solids, is usually delayed until fermentation is nearly over?

Pressing waits for reds because their colour comes from the skins; for whites the order is reversed and the juice is squeezed off before fermentation, with the free-run fraction prized over the harder press wine.

Which style of wine is made by fermenting white grapes on their skins, as red wines are?

Orange wine takes its amber colour and grip from skins left in the ferment for days or months; the ancient practice was revived by growers in Friuli, in north-east Italy, and across the border in Slovenia.

What is the primary role of sulfites (sulfur dioxide) when used in winemaking?

As a preservative, sulfur dioxide guards wine against both oxygen and bacteria; fermentation produces a little of it naturally, so even wines with no added sulfites contain some.

A 2001 DNA match traced Zinfandel to Crljenak Kaštelanski, a grape from the Dalmatian coast of which country?

Croatia's Crljenak Kaštelanski, found in a vineyard at Kaštela, matched Zinfandel's DNA in 2001, after Puglia's Primitivo had already proved to be the same grape; the find revived Croatian plantings.

Which biblical name is given to the 15-litre bottle, equal to twenty standard bottles of wine?

Nebuchadnezzar, the king who destroyed Jerusalem, names the 15-litre bottle; most of the giant sizes take biblical names, yet no one knows how the custom began.

What is the Italian term for drying grapes for months before fermentation, as for Amarone della Valpolicella?

Appassimento dries the grapes, mainly Corvina, on racks for around three to four months, concentrating their sugar into a full-bodied dry red that often tops 15% alcohol.

What is the primary organic acid in grapes, giving wine its crisp taste?

Tartaric acid is the main acid of the grape; it can fall out of a chilled wine as harmless 'wine diamonds', and the same crystals, scraped from casks and purified, are the cream of tartar used in baking.

On which day is Beaujolais Nouveau legally released for sale in France each year?

The third Thursday of November was fixed by the INAO in 1985, replacing the earlier 15 November date, and the annual race to get bottles to Paris and beyond became a marketing event.

What is the trained professional who runs a fine restaurant's wine programme called?

A sommelier runs a restaurant's cellar and wine service; in medieval France the word meant something humbler, the officer in charge of provisions and the pack animals that carried them.

What does the loosely defined label 'natural wine' generally promise?

Minimal intervention, no additives is the ideal, not a law: growers ferment with wild yeast and add little or no sulfur, and the term has no agreed legal definition.

The Côte de Beaune and Côte de Nuits make up the Côte d'Or in which French wine region?

The Côte d'Or is the heart of Burgundy; villages there such as Gevrey-Chambertin appended the names of their most famous vineyards to their own for marketing, a practice Gevrey started in 1847.

What is the term for the dead-yeast sediment that settles out of a wine after fermentation?

Lees are the spent yeast that settles after fermentation; in bottle-fermented sparkling wine they are coaxed into the neck, frozen into a plug and shot out by the wine's own pressure.

Which sweet, fizzy Italian wine has only about 5.5% alcohol, under half that of most table wines?

Moscato d'Asti stays so light because its fermentation is halted early, leaving much of the grape sugar in the wine; most table wines reach around 13%.

Which ancient civilization is often credited with spreading viticulture and winemaking throughout Europe?

The Romans carried vines along their roads and rivers into Gaul, Germania and Britain, founding vineyards along the Rhône, Moselle and Rhine that became Europe's classic regions.

What do winemakers call grape juice, skins, seeds and all, before it has begun to ferment?

Must comes from the Latin vinum mustum, 'new wine'; mustard takes its name from it too, because the seeds were once ground into a paste with must.

Which Australian wine region, settled by German-speaking Silesians in the 1840s, still harvests vines planted in that decade?

The Barossa Valley became a refuge for Silesian Lutherans fleeing religious persecution in Prussia; vines planted at Tanunda in 1847 are still cropping today.

In wine tasting, what term names the sensations and flavours that linger after a sip is swallowed or spat out?

A long finish is read as a sign of quality and complexity, since the wine's flavours and aromas keep going after it has gone.

Which light-bodied, aromatic red grape is the primary variety of Beaujolais?

Gamay is fermented as whole bunches to make young Beaujolais light and fruity; in 1395 Philip the Bold ordered the 'disloyal' grape torn out of his duchy's vineyards further north.

What is a wine called when too much air has left it brown, flat and smelling of old apples?

Oxidized wine has had too much air: it browns and loses its fresh fruit. Done on purpose, the same reaction gives oloroso sherry its nutty richness.

Which wines are traditionally served 'chambré'?

Red wines are the ones served chambré, at room temperature; the phrase dates from unheated rooms of around 15-18 °C, so a modern living room is usually too warm for them.

The Jura's sherry-like 'vin jaune' is made from which white grape?

Savagnin is the sole grape of vin jaune: the wine spends over six years in barrel under a veil of yeast and goes into a squat 62 cl bottle, said to hold what is left of each litre by then.

Which thin-skinned white grape is the main variety in Bordeaux's botrytised sweet wines?

Sémillon's thin skin makes it especially prone to the shrivelling mould those wines depend on; in Australia's Hunter Valley it is picked early and made dry, a lean style that turns honeyed and toasty with age.

What is the term for the cloudiness seen in natural wines bottled without filtering?

Turbidity is the haze from suspended yeast and protein scattering light; natural-wine makers skip the clarifying steps that would remove them, so the cloudiness is often left in on purpose.

What is the French term for stirring spent yeast sediment to build a wine's texture?

Bâtonnage is done with a bâton, a stick pushed through the bung hole to rouse the sediment; it is used mainly on barrel-aged whites and gives them a creamy weight.

Which astronaut privately took communion on the Moon in 1969, making wine the first liquid poured there?

Buzz Aldrin poured the wine into a small chalice from his church and watched it curl up the side of the cup in the Moon's weak gravity. He kept the rite off the radio.

Which fictional cannibal boasts of eating a census taker's liver "with some fava beans and a nice Chianti"?

Hannibal Lecter names a different bottle in the original novel, where the liver comes with "a big Amarone". The 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs made the switch.

Which word for an academic conference first named a Greek drinking party where guests reclined with wine?

Symposium comes from the Greek for "to drink together". Guests lay on couches while wine was drawn from a krater, a jar so big it took two men to carry.

Which sharp kitchen staple takes its name from the Old French words for "sour wine"?

Vinegar is just that: bacteria convert the alcohol in wine into sharp acetic acid. A slimy colony of those bacteria is known as the mother of vinegar.

Which word for a flat-bottomed river boat also names the dimple in the base of a wine bottle?

Punt is a feature nobody has fully explained: it may be a leftover of hand-blown glassmaking, or a way to keep a bottle from toppling over.

A 1787 Lafite wine auctioned for a record £105,000 in 1985 was said to have belonged to which US president?

Thomas Jefferson's supposed initials were engraved on the glass. Collector Bill Koch later sued the German dealer who supplied the bottles, claiming fraud.

Which monk, cellar master of Hautvillers Abbey from 1668, gives his name to Moët & Chandon's prestige wine?

Dom Pérignon never invented sparkling wine, whatever the legend says. In his day bubbles in the bottle were a serious fault, and he worked to prevent them.

Which Founding Father called wine "a constant proof that God loves us", a line often misquoted about beer?

Benjamin Franklin wrote the line in a 1779 letter to his French friend André Morellet, marvelling that rain falling on vineyards is "changed into wine".

Which US grocery chain priced Charles Shaw wine at $1.99 a bottle, earning it the nickname "Two Buck Chuck"?

Trader Joe's has sold more than 800 million bottles since 2002. Taxes and shipping fees pushed the price higher outside California, as high as $3.79 in Ohio.

Which American singer wrote and first recorded "Red Red Wine", long before UB40's reggae cover topped the charts?

Neil Diamond's song reached UB40 only through a reggae cover, and the band read the credit "N Diamond" as a Jamaican artist called Negus Diamond.

The Latin proverb "in vino veritas", echoed by Pliny the Elder, says that what is found in wine?

Truth is in wine, the saying goes, because drinkers blurt out their hidden thoughts. A longer version adds "in aqua sanitas": in water there is health.

Which common English surname comes from the trade of the craftsman who builds wooden wine barrels?

Cooper goes back to the Latin cupa, a cask. The timber staves were heated or steamed until they were pliable enough to bend into shape.

Thomas Angove's 1960s "wine cask" sold a gallon of wine in a plastic bladder packed inside what?

A cardboard box was only half the trick: early buyers had to snip a corner off the bladder, pour, and reseal it with a special peg. A built-in tap arrived in 1967.

Which 2004 film follows two friends on a road trip through Santa Barbara wine country before a wedding?

Sideways moved real markets: after its release, sales of its hero's beloved grape jumped 16% in the western United States, while the one he scorns lost ground.

Which Greek god of wine and ritual madness was also the god of theatre?

Dionysus had a strange start in life: in the Greek story, Zeus sewed the unborn god up in his thigh. His festivals staged the sacred dramas that Western theatre grew from.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus turns water into wine at a wedding feast held in which town of Galilee?

Cana's steward, tasting the result without knowing where it came from, told the bridegroom he had broken with custom by keeping the best wine until last.

Which French chemist patented a gentle heating process in 1865 to fight the "diseases" of wine?

Louis Pasteur had shown that stray microbes were what spoiled wine and beer. The cure that carries his name is now used far more often on milk.

Which British prime minister loved Pol Roger sparkling wine so much that he named a racehorse after it?

Winston Churchill had drunk it since 1908, and after he died in 1965 the house put a black border on labels shipped to Britain. Its top cuvée now bears his name.

Which American author wrote of a wine lover lured into catacombs by the promise of a cask of Amontillado?

Edgar Allan Poe tells the tale from the killer's side: Montresor chains the drunken Fortunato in a niche of the family vaults and walls him up alive.

Which Japanese drink, often called rice wine, is in fact brewed by a process closer to that of beer?

Sake starts from starch, not fruit sugar, so the rice is first converted into sugars that can ferment. Undiluted, it reaches 18–20% alcohol, stronger than table wine.

Which Iberian punch of wine and chopped fruit has a name that literally means "bloodletting"?

Sangria is a protected name: since 2014, EU rules have let only producers in its two Iberian homelands sell a drink under that label.

Which hot wine, sold in mugs at German Christmas markets, is spiced with cinnamon, cloves and orange?

Glühwein means roughly "glowing wine", after the temperature it is heated to. The oldest known tankard for it, from about 1420, belonged to a German count.

Which French aperitif of white wine and blackcurrant liqueur is named after a priest who became mayor of Dijon?

Kir takes the name of Félix Kir, who made it famous by serving it at receptions for visiting delegations. Before that it was simply a blanc-cassis.

Which cocktail of sparkling wine and white peach purée was invented at Harry's Bar in Venice?

Bellini honours the 15th-century Venetian painter Giovanni Bellini: the drink's pink colour reminded its inventor, Giuseppe Cipriani, of one of his paintings.

Which herb-flavoured fortified wine, a key part of a Martini, is named from the German word for wormwood?

Vermouth is the French way of saying Wermut. Wormwood was steeped in wine because it was believed to treat stomach disorders and intestinal parasites.

Which Persian poet, in Edward FitzGerald's translation, longs for "a Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou"?

Omar Khayyam was dubbed the Astronomer-Poet of Persia. FitzGerald's 1859 English version sold poorly at first but has since run to several hundred editions.

Wine jars labelled by year help date the reign of which pharaoh, whose tomb was discovered in 1922?

Tutankhamun's jars point to a reign of nine or ten years. Residue in five of the tomb's clay jars came from white wine, the first evidence of it in ancient Egypt.

During which Jewish festival do families drink four cups of wine at a ritual meal called the Seder?

Passover diners lean to the left as they drink each cup, reclining like free people. A fifth cup is poured for the prophet Elijah, and the door is opened for him.

Which traditional British name for Bordeaux's dark wines is also the name of a deep purplish colour?

Claret comes from clairet, a dark rosé that was Bordeaux's main export until the 18th century. The EU protected the name after British merchants showed 300 years of use.

Which slang word for cheap wine is thought by some to be an Australian mangling of the French "vin blanc"?

Plonk outgrew its supposed origin: though blanc means white, the word is used for cheap wine of any colour, often with a certain affection.

Which French ruler asked for the 1855 ranking of Bordeaux's best wines, drawn up for a Paris world's fair?

Napoleon III wanted the wines ranked for visitors to the Exposition Universelle. Brokers ordered them by reputation and trading price, and the list has barely changed since.

Which Bordeaux wine estate has had artists such as Picasso, Dalí and Miró design each year's label?

Château Mouton Rothschild made the artist's label a fixture in 1946, after the success of its 1945 design. The 1973 label was dedicated to Picasso, who had died that April.

The Speyer wine bottle, unopened for some 1,700 years, was preserved partly by a thick layer of what?

Olive oil sealed the wine off from the air, helped by a hot wax seal. Found in a nobleman's tomb in 1867, the bottle stays shut for fear of how the liquid would react.

Which country's Areni-1 cave holds the world's oldest known winery, about 6,100 years old?

Armenia's cave held a clay wine press, a vat and storage jars from about 4100 BC. The world's oldest known leather shoe turned up in the same cave.

In 2010, divers found 168 bottles of sparkling wine, several still drinkable, in a wreck on the bed of which sea?

Baltic Sea cold and darkness kept the wine sound. It proved far sweeter than modern fizz, at over 140 grams of sugar per litre, yet Russian buyers of the day asked for twice that.

Which two-handled clay jar did ancient Greek traders use in vast numbers to ship wine across the Mediterranean?

Amphora comes from the Greek for "carried on both sides", after its two handles. At sea the jars were probably racked upright and roped through those handles.

Which word, built on the Greek for wine, describes a devoted lover of wine?

Oenophile joins the Greek oinos, wine, to -phile, a lover of something. The same root gives oenology, the study of wine and winemaking.

Which country's Mileștii Mici cellars, in 200 km of limestone galleries, hold a Guinness-record wine collection?

Moldova's cellars entered the record book in 2005. Only 55 km of the galleries are in use, and the limestone keeps them at a steady 12–14 °C all year.

Commandaria, called the world's oldest named wine still in production, is a sweet amber wine from which island?

Cyprus's crusader knights gave the wine its name: the Templars and then the Hospitallers ran an estate known as the Commandaria and exported its wine to Europe's royal courts.

Lacryma Christi, a wine whose Latin name means "Christ's tear", is grown on the slopes of which Italian volcano?

Mount Vesuvius owes the name to an old myth: Christ, weeping over Lucifer's fall from heaven, shed tears on the land and inspired the vines that grew there.

Rumour held that George, Duke of Clarence, executed for treason in 1478, was drowned in a butt of which wine?

Malmsey may be legend, but Shakespeare kept it: in Richard III, hired assassins stab the duke and then drown him in the butt.

Which prestige sparkling wine was created in 1876 for Tsar Alexander II, in a bottle with a flat bottom?

Cristal's see-through glass was a security measure: the tsar wanted no explosive hidden in the dark hollow beneath an ordinary bottle. He also liked to see the bubbles.

What is the Italian name for the squat wine bottle in a straw basket that was long the trademark of Chianti?

Fiasco bottles have toasted history: one was used in 1942 to celebrate the first controlled nuclear chain reaction, at Chicago Pile-1. Few Chianti makers still use them.

Which US state is home to Augusta, which in 1980 became the first recognised American Viticultural Area for wine?

Missouri's Augusta won the status on 20 June 1980, eight months before California's most famous wine valley, which became the nation's second appellation.

Which American driver began motorsport's podium ritual of spraying sparkling wine after winning Le Mans in 1967?

Dan Gurney shook the bottle and aimed it at the journalists crowding the podium, a playful jab at those who had doubted him. Soon everyone was getting a shower.

Which American critic popularised the 100-point wine rating scale through his newsletter The Wine Advocate?

Robert Parker launched the newsletter in 1978, taking his cue from consumer champion Ralph Nader: he wanted to review wine with no ties to those who sold it.

Which Greek wine tastes of Aleppo pine, a legacy of the way ancient wine jars were sealed against the air?

Retsina outlived its purpose: barrels made the resin seal unnecessary from the 3rd century AD, but drinkers liked the taste so much that the style carried on.

Which large egg-shaped clay jars, buried in the ground, are the traditional wine fermenting vessels of the Caucasus?

Kvevri winemaking joined UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage in 2013. Between uses each jar is washed, sterilised with lime and re-coated with beeswax.

Casa Madero, founded in 1597 and called the oldest winery in the Americas, is in which country?

Mexico's pioneer estate lies in a town whose name means Holy Mary of the Grapevines. Vines arrived with 16th-century colonists, making the country the oldest wine-growing region in the Americas.

Which grape, long presumed extinct in France, was identified in Chile in 1994 after years of mistaken identity?

Carménère cuttings reached Chile from Bordeaux in the 19th century and were long confused with another variety, until a French vine expert told them apart.