The WSET / ISG Challenge Number Eight: Where in the World is That?

Happy New Year and welcome to the first edition of the WSET / ISG Challenge for 2011. This year is going to be a great one for tastings and exciting events in the wine industry. Here’s a teaser for one that you should mark on your calendar.

The first Tales of the Cocktail on Tour and mini-festival will be held in Vancouver from March 13-15, 2011. Tickets are priced from $155 and go on sale Saturday, January 15 at TalesoftheCocktail.com.

And now, here comes this week’s quiz.

Menetou Salon is located in:

1. Nantais
2. Anjou Saumur
3. Touraine
4. Central Vineyards

Bonnezeaux is made from:

1. Chenin Blanc

2. Sauvignon Blanc

3. Chardonnay

4. Merlot

FYI: These are actual practice questions from Frank’s WSET and ISG studies. Let us know how you’re enjoying them and using them.

The WSET / ISG Challenge Number 7: A Medley of Miscellany

Happy Boxing Day to all our readers. We hope you indulged in some wonderful times with friends and family yesterday, and that your celebrations included some equally wonderful vintages. This week, Frank’s chosen a couple of miscellaneous questions to test your skills. Tune in tomorrow for answers.

What is a Reichenstenier?

1. A grape variety
2. A QWPSR in Germany
3. A village in the Rheingau
4. A village in the Rheinhessan

Edelfavle is what?

1. A bereich in the Rheingau
2. A field blend from Alsace
3. Noble Rot
4. A synonym for Riesling used in the Rheingau

FYI: The picture above left is a field in the Rheingau region, below right is a village in Alsace that was simply too pretty not to show you. As always, these are actual practice questions from Frank’s WSET and ISG studies. Let us know how you’re enjoying them and using them.

 

The WSET / ISG Challenge Number Five: Argentina

Time to grab some Malbec and find the answers to this week's practice questions.

True or False: There is more Malbec planted in Argentina than anywhere else in the world.

True. Although Malbec is planted in various wine regions throughout France (including Bordeaux and South West France), the total acreage began decreasing in the early 20^th Century as Merlot and Cabernet Franc began gaining popularity. By 1968 plantings in the Libournais was down to 12,100 acres (4,900 hectares) and fell further to 3,460 acres (1,400 hectares) by 2000. It’s estimated that two thirds of the world’s Malbec is grown in Argentina.

What Argentina wine region is located in Patagonia?

1. Nuequen

2. Jujoy

3. La Rioja

4. Salta

If you don’t know the answer right away, this question can be solved by a process of elimination. Patagonia is located at the southernmost point of South America. Since Jujuy and Salta high elevation regions in the northwest, neither of these can be the correct answer. La Rioja was not a trick question – there is a small wine region of 20,000 acres, also in the northwestern part of Argentina. Therefore, the correct answer is Neuquen.

FYI: These are actual practice questions from Frank’s WSET and ISG studies. Let us know how you’re enjoying them and using them.

The WSET / ISG Challenge Number Five: Argentina

I’m just back from a week in Mexico where some spectacular, and astonishingly inexpensive, wines from South America were on the menu every evening. (Note to self: don’t try the Mexican Chardonnay again!) So I was delighted to see Frank had chosen Argentina for today’s practice questions.

And a big Thank you to our readers for your patience as we worked through techie computer issues and vacation scheduling. (Yes, Virginia, there are still a few hotels in Nuevo Vallarta that choose to charge usurious rates for Internet connection. Hint: check your Mayan Resorts reservation closely.)

Here we go with another round. Answers tomorrow.

There is more Malbec (grapes shown left) planted in Argentina than anywhere else in the world.

True or False

What Argentine wine region is located in Patagonia?

1. Nuequen

2. Jujoy

3. La Rioja

4. Salta

FYI: These are actual practice questions from Frank’s WSET and ISG studies. Let us know how you’re enjoying them and using them.

The WSET / ISG Challenge: Stalled by Java

We’ve had a bit of a glitch for this week’s WSET / ISG challenge. More accurately, Frank’s computer is having a glitch. And the name of that glitch is Caffeine. Now while I drink my java pure and unadulterated (can’t you just see the halo?), Frank adds it all — cream and sugar… that would be lots and lots of sugar.

So, you guessed it, the entire contents of an entire, sugar-laden grande from his favourite coffee bistro are currently sloshing around inside his laptop. So the next round of practice questions are under wraps until the computer techie can de-glue.

In the meantime, here are a few cool coffee factoids just for fun.

Winning the prize for funky, innovative marketing is Sheridan’s, a coffee liqueur first introduced in 1994 by Thomas Sheridan & Sons — the same company that brought

Bailey’s to centre stage. The two-stage bottle is fill with a black coffee/whiskey liqueur on one side and a white milk chocolate liqueur on the other. Carefully poured, the white chocolate floats gentle to the surface creating a drink with visual panache and great taste.

The classic Black Russian cocktail (two parts vodka, one part coffee liqueur is said to have made its debut in 1949 at the Hotel Metropole in Brussels. According to legend, Gustave Tops created it at in honor of Perle Mesta, who was at the time US ambassador to Luxembourg.

According to the International Coffee Organization, in 1720 a French naval officer named Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu acquired a coffee tree while on leave in Paris from his post in Martinique.

Intending to take the plant home, he secured it in a glass case on deck to keep it warm and prevent damage from salt water. Somehow, the plant survived an invasion of Tunisian pirates, a violent storm during which it had to be tied to the deck, potential death from a jealous fellow officer, and even water rationing that occurred when the ship was becalmed and De Clieu sacrificed most of his own water ratios to keep it alive. Finally, the ship arrived in Martinique and the coffee tree was re-planted at Preebear where it grew and multiplied. The first harvest came in 1726, and by 1777 there were an estimated 19 million coffee trees on Martinique.

Copa de Oro is a great substitute for the more expensive Kahlua.

The WSET / ISG Challenge Number Five

The Italian white wine known as Gavi is made from which grape?

1. Trebbianno
2. Cortese
3. Arneis
4. Mocscato de Asti

This one may have been a little difficult. These are all white grapes, so it’s a little harder to rule them out one by one. Trebbianno might have been a good guess, but although it is planted all over Italy, true Trebbianno is not planted in cool north. Arneis is usually labeled as a varietal. Moscato de Asti was a free one; it has its own DOC. That leaves Cortese as being the choice. Jancis Robinson considers Gavi to be Piedmont's most interesting expression of this grape.

What Italian wine region produces all three of the following wines: Spanna, Arneis, and Brachetto?

1. Piedmont
2. Umbra
3. Tuscany
4. Veneto

This one should have been easy. Arneis is not planted elsewhere in Italy except Piedmont, it

has been known as Barolo Bianco. Nebbiolo is also known as Spanna in the eastern part of Piedmont (shown right). Brachetto is the aromatic light red variety, which makes a light red fizzy style of wine, a red version Of Moscato d’Asti.

FYI: These are actual practice questions from Frank’s WSET and ISG studies. Let us know how you’re enjoying them and using them.

The WSET / ISG Challenge Number 4: Beaujolais

As the clock in France strikes midnight on the third Thursday of every November, Beaujolais becomes the undisputed diva of the wine world – at least until thirsty Beaujolais Nouveau lovers around the world have savoured the first of that year’s release.

In his witty and information-packed book, I’ll Drink to That, Rudolph Chelminski describes the origin of what is arguably one the best known, annual wine rites in the world.

It began in 1970 when two Englishmen, Joseph Berkmann (owner of a wine distribution company among other business ventures and weekly wine correspondent for the London Sunday Times) and Clement Freud (a friend and rival who happened to be in Romaneche as wine correspondent for the London Sun), shared supper and a number of bottles of Duboeuf Beaujolais over dinner.

“Only the Brits, that admirably odd people, could have given birth to the monument, the cathedral of nonsense that these two gents constructed from a tiny spark of an idea, or carried it off with such surrealistic virtuosity,” writes Chelminski. “As bottle succeeded bottle and

midnight drew nigh, Berkmann and Freud found themselves becoming keener of insight, bolder, more intelligent and more certain of their own virtues and capacities. The germ of an

idea took shape; jovial boast became affirmation; affirmation became insistence; and insistence became challenge. The glove was hurled: I can get my cartons of primeur to London before you can. Some time after midnight, each man roared away from Romaneche with several cartons of 1970 Beaujolais Nouveau in the back of his car, muttering Central European imprecations at the other and vowing to write nasty things about his rival’s oenological ineptitude.”

Since last week was the annual release, Frank chose Beaujolais as the subject of this week’s quiz.

How many villages in Beaujolais have the right to call their wines Beaujolais Villages.

a. 10

b. 37

c. 39

d. 96

Which is not a Beaujolais Cru

a. Morgon

b. Saint Amour

c. Moulin a Vent

d. Fixin

FYI: These are actual practice questions from Frank’s WSET and ISG studies. Let us know how you’re enjoying them and using them. And check back tomorrow for the answers plus more trivia about Beaujolais. (Upper left: Gamay grapes on the vine. Below: the rolling fields of Beaujolais.)