Fill in the Blancs – The Fiendish Wine Quiz

Welcome to the Fiendish Wine Quiz, specially designed to keep your brain cells sharp in this season of endless fun and excess food. As always it will be well worth testing your wine knowledge and research abilities because the top prize this year is a two night trip to the fabulous wine region of Burgundy courtesy of Bouchard Père et Fils one of Burgundy’s oldest wine merchant houses.

The winner and a companion will travel by train from St Pancras to Beaune in the heart of the Burgundy region where there will be tours of vineyards and the Bouchard winery and cellars.

There will be time for lots of tasting, and even some sightseeing.

Never one to miss out on a visit to vineyards, I will accompany the winner on the trip. Train travel from St Pancras, two nights accommodation and all meals in France are included. We will need to arrange a mutually convenient time for the trip, avoiding peak holiday times.

For 3 runners up there are copies of the outstanding wine book of the year, Oz Clarkes’ Red and White which charts his progression from sipping ginger wine as a child to TV personality, taking in the vineyards of the world.

As always, you may use any means at your disposal to get to the right answers, including pestering your local wine merchant since they are often an invaluable source of up-to-the-minute information. This quiz is not open to anyone in the wine trade and that includes wine lecturers and bloggers who should concentrate on helping their students and followers win.

If you read The Yorkshire Post online, you may want to send in your answers on plain paper, however I shall need your name and address in your own handwriting on your entry sheet.  If you have a copy of the newspaper then, as usual, please tick the right answers and send me the whole page. Only one entry per household is allowed and any multiple entries, including any entries sent by email will be discarded.

I will mark all the entries and no arguing will be allowed, although I welcome the customary nit-picking and point-scoring from regular readers which relieves the tedium of marking the entries.

All correct entries will go into Grapevine’s giant ice bucket and the winner will be chosen at random. There is no cash alternative to any of the prizes.

Send to:  Chris Bond, Yorkshire Post Magazine, No. 1 Leeds, 26 Whitehall Road, Leeds LS12 1BE to arrive no later than Monday 14 January 2019.

1) When was Burgundy house Bouchard Père et Fils founded?

2) How did Antoine Philibert Joseph Bouchard acquire top vineyard Beaune 1er Cru Grèves Vigne de l’Enfant Jésus.

a) It was given to the company by King Louis XVI

b) Antoine Bouchard married the previous owner’s daughter

c) It was sold to Bouchard during the French Revolution

3) On 31 July 1395, Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy issued an edict, banishing a ‘disloyal variety’ from the Cote d’Or.  Which variety?

a) Gamay

b) Pinot Noir

c) Gouais

4) Who built the Hospices de Beaune?

a) Philip the Bold

b) Nicolas Rolin

c) The monks at Cîteaux Abbey

5) What is a tracteur enjambeur?

a) A small machine for weeding under the vines

b) A horse-draw plough

c) A tractor that straddles rows of vines

6) Which grape varieties are permitted in white Burgundy?

a) Chardonnay

b) Amigne

c) Pinot Blanc

d) Aligoté

7) How much vineyard of Grand Cru and Premier Cru status does Bouchard Père et Fils own?

a) 86 hectares

b) 130 hectares

c) 273 hectares

8) These are all Bouchard Père et Fils wines. Spot the odd one out.

a) Volnay Taille Pieds

b) Meursault Perrières

c) Beaune Les Teurons

d) Pommard Les Pézerolles

9) Ian Botham has a new range of wines.  What are they called?

a) Botham

b) Beefy

c) 149

10) What rare, almost-extinct grape variety has Valpolicella producer Masi recently planted?

a) Oseleta

b) Viognier

c) Vespaiolo

11) Your sake is graded as Junmai Daiginjo.  Is it made from:

a) Unpolished rice

b) Rice polished to remove 30% of the grain

c) Rice polished to remove 50% of the grain

12) What is Pét Nat?

a) Sparkling wine from Nantes

b) Sparkling wine made by Méthode Ancestral

c) A wine with the alcohol removed

13) How would you get from Painted Rock to Painted Wolf?

a) Walk across the road

b) Head west for 500 miles

c) Head south east for 10,000 miles

14) What is the grape variety in Condrieu?

15) What is GSM?

a) A Gyratory Sieving Machine

b) A tasting note – Gorgeous, Sensational, Mouthfilling

c) Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre

16) 10 hectares of Valpolicella vineyard are equally planted with Corvina, Rondinella and Molinara at 3000 vines per hectare.  Each vine produces 2 kg of grapes which are laid out to dry for 100 days.  Corvina loses 40% of its weight while Rondinella and Molinara lose 30% of their weight.  Pressing yields 60% of juice which is and fermented.  How much Amarone wine is made?

a) 32,000 bottles

b) 60,000 bottles

c) 80,000 bottles

17) Rosa Kruger is doing vital work in South African vineyards. What is she doing?

a) Eradicating leaf roll virus

b) Helping to preserve old vines

c) Working on genetically modified grape varieties

18) What is the name of South African winemaker Bruce Jack’s dog?

19) Match the grape varieties to the wine regions

a)Kékfrankos                               1) South West France

b) Saperavi                                   2) Hungary

c) Nero di Troia                           3) Friuli

d) Mauzac                                     4) Georgia

e) Refosco                                     5) Puglia

20) Arrange the following English vineyards from north to south

a) Halfpenny Green

b) Hush Heath

c) Leventhorpe

d) Rathfinny

e) Renishaw Hall

21) Where will you find the wine region Dundee Hills?

a) Australia

b) Oregon

c) Scotland

22) Assume the following:

Excise Duty is £2.23 per bottle, VAT is 20%, retailers’ gross margin is 25% and other costs such as packaging and transport add 56p to the cost of each bottle.

How much is the wine worth in:

a) A £5 bottle of wine_______________________

b) A £10 bottle of wine________________________

c) A £20 bottle of wine_______________________

23) Match the cost of the wine in bottles A, B and C with anything edible on your dinner table this evening

A______________________

B______________________

C_______________________

24) Starting with the largest, arrange these countries in order of wine production

a) Canada

b) China

c) Germany

d) Russia

e) Spain

25) Which Bordeaux château will auction special cases of wine at Sotherby’s and donate all proceeds to help the restoration of Versailles?

26) Where is the world’s highest vineyard?

a) Beudon, Switzerland

b) Cai Na Xiang, Tibet

c) Rangiora, Tahiti

d) Salta, Argentina

27) Who went from Osset to Sicily and made a fortune from Marsala?

a) John Blandy

b) Thomas Hardy

c) Benjamin Ingham

28) Where is Man O’ War Vineyard?

29) What is the main grape variety in Soave?

a) Garganega

b) Pecorino

c) Riesling Italico

30) Little George has run into money troubles again and has decided to auction some of Great Uncle George’s fabulous wine collection.  Which single bottle will help him the most?

a) 1774 Vin Jaune

b) 1985 Screaming Eagle

c) 1936 Domaine de la Romanée Conti

d) 1907 Heidsieck Monopole Champagne, Daimant Bleu from the ship Jönköping

YOUR DETAILS

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Send to:  Chris Bond, Yorkshire Post Magazine, No 1 Leeds, 26 Whitehall Road, Leeds, LS12 1BE to arrive no later than Monday 14 January 2019

About The Author

Christine Austin

Christine is a wine writer, broadcaster and a wine judge for several international wine competitions. She has a technical background and spent five years as a buyer for a major supermarket before moving to wine writing.She writes for The Yorkshire Post Magazine and organises the York Festival of Food and Drink. She has won both the Lanson and the Roederer prizes for wine writing.

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