Wine: Grapes, Regions and Labels – answers and explanations
Here are the answers to all 15 questions in the Wine: Grapes, Regions and Labels quiz, each with a short explanation. A friendly tour of wine: grapes, famous regions, bubbles and label lingo. Haven't played yet? Take the quiz first and compare your score.
Play the quiz · 15 questions1. Which red grape is used to make Beaujolais wine?
Answer: Gamay
Red Beaujolais is made almost entirely from Gamay, a grape grown in the Beaujolais region just south of Burgundy in France. Every November, Beaujolais Nouveau is released only weeks after the harvest.
2. Chianti wine is produced in which Italian region?
Answer: Tuscany
Chianti is a red wine from central Tuscany, made mainly from the Sangiovese grape. Its historic heartland, Chianti Classico, lies between Florence and Siena.
3. What does 'Brut' on a Champagne label tell you about the wine?
Answer: It is dry, with little sugar
Brut is the label term for dry Champagne, which has less than 12 grams of sugar per litre. It is the most common style; Extra Brut and Brut Nature are even drier.
4. In traditional Champagne making, where does the second fermentation happen?
Answer: In the bottle
In the traditional method, adding yeast and sugar to still wine starts a second fermentation inside the bottle, and this creates the bubbles. The leftover yeast is later removed by riddling and disgorging.
5. Natural wine corks are made from which material?
Answer: The bark of an oak tree
Natural corks are cut from the bark of the cork oak (Quercus suber), which can be stripped every nine years or so without harming the tree. Portugal is the world's largest cork producer.
6. Napa Valley, famous for its Cabernet Sauvignon, is in which US state?
Answer: California
Napa Valley is in California, north of San Francisco. It is best known for Cabernet Sauvignon and became famous worldwide after its wines beat top French wines at the 1976 'Judgment of Paris' tasting.
7. Rioja is the best-known wine region of which country?
Answer: Spain
Rioja is Spain's best-known wine region. It lies in the north of the country along the Ebro River, and its red wines are made mainly from the Tempranillo grape.
8. Prosecco, the popular sparkling wine, comes from which country?
Answer: Italy
Prosecco is an Italian sparkling wine from the Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia regions in the northeast. It is made mostly from the Glera grape, and its bubbles usually come from a second fermentation in large tanks.
9. Australia's Barossa Valley is most famous for which red grape?
Answer: Shiraz
The Barossa Valley in South Australia is most famous for Shiraz, the Australian name for Syrah. Some of its Shiraz vines are among the oldest still producing in the world, with a few over a century old.
10. On a wine menu, what does the word 'vintage' refer to?
Answer: The year the grapes were harvested
A wine's vintage is the year its grapes were harvested, not the year it was bottled. Wines blended from several harvests, such as most Champagnes, are labelled non-vintage (NV).
11. Chablis, from northern Burgundy, is made from which white grape?
Answer: Chardonnay
Chablis is made entirely from Chardonnay. It grows in Burgundy's most northerly vineyards, near Auxerre, where the cool climate and Kimmeridgian limestone soils give the wine a crisp, mineral style.
12. New Zealand's Marlborough region is world-famous for which white grape?
Answer: Sauvignon Blanc
Marlborough, at the northern tip of New Zealand's South Island, is world-famous for its zesty, aromatic Sauvignon Blanc. The region took off in the 1980s and is now New Zealand's largest wine region.
13. During fermentation, yeast turns grape sugar into alcohol and which gas?
Answer: Carbon dioxide
In alcoholic fermentation, yeast turns grape sugars into ethanol and carbon dioxide. Most of the gas escapes, but in sparkling wines it is trapped so that it forms the bubbles.
14. How does most rosé wine get its pink colour?
Answer: Brief contact with red grape skins
Most rosé gets its colour from red grape juice that stays in contact with the dark skins for only a few hours before being separated. Rosé Champagne is a notable exception, since it can be made by blending red and white wine.
15. Which Spanish sparkling wine is made by the same method as Champagne?
Answer: Cava
Cava is Spain's traditional-method sparkling wine, with a second fermentation in the bottle just as in Champagne. Most of it comes from Penedès in Catalonia, and it is often made from Macabeo, Xarel·lo and Parellada grapes.