Test your Wi-Q with these questions from my upcoming wine game, Cork Jester's Wine Teasers.

Question: Why do wine glasses have stems?

a. To keep hands from warming the wine

b. For elegant appearance

c. The raised bowl makes color and clarity easier to evaluate

Answer: a. Tasters have long insisted on holding the glass by its stem or, even more pretentiously, by its foot. Then along come Riedel's stemless "O" glasses. I guess rules are meant to be broken. Just like glasses.

Q: Dinner is in 45 minutes and you're serving a young cabernet. You should:

a. Open just before pouring

b. Open now to let the wine breathe

c. Pour or decant the wine now

A: c. Some young reds need oxygen to mellow their harsh tannins. But they can no more "breathe" through the bottle neck than you could suck a pork chop through a straw. Splash that sucker into a decanter and make it pant.

Q: Rosé wine is made from:

a. Pink grapes

b. Half red and half white grapes

c. Red grapes

A: c. It's made from red grapes without their skin, which is where the color resides. A far cry from that cotton-candy stuff we all started on at some point, good rosé can be tangy, robust and bone-dry. So real men can drink it. Ernest Hemingway downed a bottle of Spanish rosado at the bull fights every day with lunch, and they didn't call him Papa for nothing.

Q: The scent of a fine, aged Riesling is reminiscent of:

a. NFL locker room

b. Greyhound bus depot

c. Wet monkey

A: b. As Riesling ages, it develops a waxy gasoline or diesel smell, which connoisseurs learn to love. Especially when they paid a lot.

Q: Body, i.e., how full or heavy the wine feels in your mouth, is mostly due to:

a. Tannins

b. Flavanoids

c. Ethanol

A: c. Alcohol is the main reason for full body, although in very sweet wines sugar is also a factor. Light, medium and full-bodied wines are analogous to water, milk and cream.

Q: What gives the famous French dessert wine, Sauternes, its special flavor?

a. Gray, furry mold

b. Acacia-wood barrels

c. Clover honey

A: a. The fungus Botrytis cinerea, known as "noble rot," dries up grapes, turning them into shriveled, fuzzy packets of concentrated flavor and sugar. It also imparts its own unique honeyed aroma. From scary grapes comes gorgeous wine.

Q: Which wine raises testosterone levels in women (and where can I get some!)?

a. Syrah

b. Port

c. Champagne

A: c. All alcohol does this to a certain extent, but champagne works faster thanks to its bubbles. Maybe that's why champagne is considered so romantic.

Q: Which of these grapes does not belong?

a. Pinot blanc

b. Sauvignon blanc

c. Fumé blanc

A: a. Pinot blanc is from a different grape family. Fumé was dreamed up by American producers to replace the hard-to-pronounce sauvignon blanc. Since fumé is French for smoke, it has come to designate a smoky, oak-fermented style as opposed to the zippy, un-oaked sauvignon blanc style of, say, New Zealand.

Q: You spill your merlot on your mother-in-law's new white carpet. Quick, cover the stain with:

a. Salt and white vinegar

b. White wine

c. Peroxide and dish soap

A: c. The first two methods are traditional, but pretty useless. The best home remedy is 1 part blue Dawn detergent to 2 parts hydrogen peroxide, freshly mixed. Effective on both old and new wine stains, it works because . . . um, we don't know, but trust us, it does.

Q: Which bar staple is actually a wine?

a. Bitters

b. Vermouth

c. Triple sec

A: b. Originally considered medicine, vermouth is wine infused with herbs. As many as a hundred herb varieties go into the carefully guarded, proprietary mixtures. Though we see mostly commercial vermouth here, many European wineries make their own much quirkier versions.

For more information about Wine Teasers, e-mail me at Jester@corkjester.com, or go to my site: www.cork jester.com.

Back to Top