Some Interesting Facts About Wine Quiz

Answer: Paul

This advice can be found in 1 Timothy 5:23. While the Bible condemns drunkenness, there are many verses, both in the Old and New Testaments, that speak favorably of wine. In fact, every book in the Old Testament, with the exception of the Book of Jonah, mentions wine or vineyards. Paul seems to have believed that his friend Timothy's health problems stemmed from his being a teetotaler, and drinking only water.

Many people today believe that moderate consumption of wine bestows many health benefits.

Answer: Dionysus

It is not surprising that the Greeks had a god of wine. The Greek historian, Thucydides, even went so far as to claim that wine was one of the pillars of civilization when he wrote in the fifth century BC that "the peoples of the Mediterranean began to emerge from barbarism when they learnt to cultivate the olive and the vine." Dionysus was the son of Zeus and Semele, the daughter of King Cadmus of Thebes.

There is evidence that the cult of Dionysus may even predate the earliest Greek civilizations. Dionysus was known to the Romans as Bacchus.

Answer: True

The Greeks and Romans almost always diluted their wine with water. This may have been a way to avoid becoming intoxicated, but it was probably also due to the fact that ancient wine didn't taste all that good, and tended to spoil quickly. Only very famous and costly wines, such as the fabled Falernian, mentioned by the poets Catullus and Horace, would have been drunk neat.

In ancient Rome, drinking undiluted wine was called drinking "in the Thracian fashion," and was said to have been done only by sailors and barbarians.

Answer: Vatican City

According to the Wine Institute, the residents of Vatican City consume almost 74 liters of wine per capita each year. That's about 100 standard sized bottles per person. Andorra is in second place at 46.4 liters. The world's largest consumer of wine overall is the United States, which drank nearly three billion liters of wine in 2013, and wine consumption is still growing steadily.

In per capita terms, however, the U.S. ranks only 56th.

Answer: 125

Red and white wines have about the same number of calories per ounce. The amount of calories in a glass of wine can vary a little, depending on the type of grapes used, the alcohol content, etc., but most table wines, such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, or Chardonnay, contain about 25 calories per ounce. Generally speaking, the higher a wine's alcohol content, the more calories it has, and sweeter wines have more calories than dry wines.

There are numerous "diet wines" on the market, which are made by removing some of the alcohol, but they save you (at most) about 20 calories per glass, and usually don't taste very good. You could do as well by drinking a dry Riesling, a white wine grape that makes wines with naturally low alcohol levels. One important thing to remember is that these calorie levels are true only for table wines; fortified wines, such as port or sherry, or sweet dessert wines, have many more calories per glass than table wines.

Some studies have shown that the calories in wine are not easily turned into fat, so wine may be a better choice for dieters than beer, soda, or fruit juice.

Answer: England

Believe it or not, during medieval times England was a major wine growing country. Vines were brought to England by the Romans, and when William the Conqueror commissioned the Domesday Book, a survey of all English property for purposes of taxation, it revealed there were 46 major vineyards in England. By 1509, this number had grown to 139 - 11 of them owned by the Crown, 67 by noble families and 52 by the Church. Some wine is still produced in England today, but on a very small scale, and using grape varieties that did not exist in the Middle Ages. So what happened to destroy the English wine industry?

Well, a couple of things. First of all, as methods of preserving wine improved, it became easier to import wine from France and Germany. As anyone who is familiar with Shakespeare's plays knows, these wines became very popular, and soon dominated the market. But the major factor was something we are familiar with today: climate change. With all the talk about global warming nowadays, people tend to forget that it was warmer in Europe a thousand years ago - a lot warmer. Around 1530, temperatures started falling dramatically, ushering in a period that historians call "the little ice age." It simply became too cold to grow wine grapes in England, and people began drinking beer and ale instead, except for the wealthy, who could afford to drink expensive imported wine. Wine production never completely died out in England, but it has never regained its former prominence, either. In 2014, English winemakers produced about five million bottles of wine, a little less than 1 percent of domestic consumption.

Answer: The bark of a tree

Corks are made from the bark of a type of oak tree. While there is evidence that corks were sometimes used as stoppers for wine containers as far back as ancient times, they didn't really catch on until about the middle of the 17th century. Before that time, wine bottles were sealed with glass stoppers, pitch, or oily rags. Corks began to be used more frequently when glass-makers were able to produce bottles with uniform neck dimensions. Natural corks are compressible, and expand to form a tight seal in the neck of the wine bottle, but also admit just enough air to allow the wine to "breathe" and age properly.

Spain and Portugal are the world's leading producers of cork. It takes about 25 years for a tree to be large enough for cork to be harvested for the first time. After that, each tree can be harvested again at nine year intervals. Removing the cork doesn't harm the trees, which can live up to 300 years. Some modern wines are sold in bottles with screw caps, or artificial corks made from synthetic materials, but real corks are still the closure of choice for most makers of fine wines.

Answer: Thomas Jefferson

Americans in the 18th century consumed staggering amounts of alcoholic beverages. The most popular drinks, however, were rum and ale, and the wines that were consumed were usually sweet, fortified wines such as Port and Madeira. But Thomas Jefferson was a connoisseur; when he built his home, Monticello, he included a large wine cellar in the plans, and when he returned to the United States after serving as its minister to France in 1789, he brought 680 bottles of fine French wine with him. Records show that in his first year as President of the the United States in 1801, he spent over $3000 of his $25,000 salary on wine. He not only liked to drink wine, he also liked to talk about it. After dining with Jefferson in 1807, future president John Quincey Adams noted in his diary: "There was, as usual, a dissertation upon wines."

In 1985, German wine dealer Hardy Rodenstock announced that he had discovered a cache of wines from Jefferson's own wine cellar. The wines, Chateau Lafite and Chateau Mouton-Rothschild from the 1784 and 1787 vintages, were in bottles with the initials "Th. J." engraved on them. Four of the bottles were purchased by billionaire Bill Koch, who later began to have doubts about their authenticity. Tests showed the bottles had been engraved with an electric drill, and an analysis of the wine showed that it was no older than 1962. The story of these bottles is told in a very interesting book called "The Billionaire's Vinegar."

Answer: True

True. Grapes won't grow in Alaska, so the Denali Winery imports grape juice to make its wines. There are many other states with cold climates that produce wine from special hybrid grape varieties that have been genetically engineered to survive harsh winters.

Note: all states produce wine, but it doesn't mean they produce good wine. My native state of Illinois is home to more than 100 wineries. Every Illinois wine I have tasted has been awful.

Answer: Brandy

Brandy is distilled from wine, while the other three are usually distilled from various grains. The word brandy comes from the Dutch "gebrande wijn," which means "burnt wine." Some form of brandy has been around for over a thousand years, but it didn't really catch on until the 16th century. Some merchants from the Netherlands had a large supply of thin, sour white wine they wanted to export to England. Since the wine was of low quality, they knew it would not fetch a high price, so they looked for ways to cut costs. Someone came up with the idea to distill the wine; by eliminating a lot of the water, it could be shipped more cheaply, and it would also help lower the import taxes, which were based on volume. The idea was that consumers could add the water back to to the distillate when they were ready to drink it.

Well, the Dutch soon discovered three things: first, adding water back to brandy did not make it taste like wine. Secondly, it actually tasted better, at least to some people. And, thirdly, the distilled wine could be stored for years in wooden barrels, which further improved the taste. Perhaps best of all was the fact that cheap, almost undrinkable wine often made the best brandy. It didn't take long for the new drink to catch on, and the Dutch merchants were rolling in dough.

Of course, the Dutch monopoly didn't last for long. France, in particular began producing very high quality brandies called Cognac and Armagnac. Today there are dozens of different types of brandy produced all over the world. Fruits other than grapes, such as apples, peaches, plums, etc., may be used to make brandy, but if the bottle simply says "brandy," without a qualifier, it is most likely made from grapes. Like fine wines, old bottles of brandy can sell for thousands of dollars. In 2011, a bottle of Croizet Vintage 1858 Cognac sold for $156,000 at an auction in Hong Kong!