Wine Trivia

  • All grape juice from white or red grapes is ‘white’ or clear. Only by letting the grape juice soak with the red grape skins does it get stained’ and turn red. This soaking of the juice with red grape skins also imparts tannins and body to the finished wine.
  • Rosé Wine is not a blend of Red Wine and White Wine, as is commonly believed. Rosé wine is generally made with the juice from red grapes and is only allowed to soak with the red grape skins for a short amount of time.
  • Champagne in not entirely made from the juice of white grapes. The red grape, Pinot Noir is often used to make Champagne but the juice is not allowed to soak with the skins of Pinot Noir grapes – unless they are making Rosé Champagne.
  • It always takes 6 half-twists or turns to undo the wire clasp or ‘cage’ that binds the Champagne cork on to the top of the champagne bottle.
  • It takes about 2 ½ pounds of grapes to make a bottle of wine.
  • One acre of grapevines can produce about 800 gallons of wine.
  • The corkscrew was invented in 1860.
  • There over 10,000 wine varieties that exist in the world today
  • Vanilla flavor and aroma in wine comes from the used of new oak wood barrels in the winemaking process.
  • There approximately 85 calories in a 4 ounce glass of red wine and about the same number of calories as an equal amount of grape juice – but who’s counting?!
  • Wine making began in Mesopotamia (where most of Iraq exists today) in approximately 6000 BC
  • Christopher Columbus brought Sherry on his voyage to the New World.
  • As Magellan prepared to sail around the world in 1519, he spent more on Sherry than on weapons.
  • The shallow champagne glass originated with Marie Antoinette. It was first formed from wax molds made of her breasts.
  • A raisin dropped into a glass of champagne will repeatedly bounce up and down between the top and the bottom of the glass.
  • As late as the mid-17th century, the French wine makers did not use corks. Instead, they used oil-soaked rags stuffed into the necks of bottles.
  • The longest recorded champagne cork flight was 177 feet and 9 inches, four feet from level ground at Woodbury Vineyards in New York State.
  • In the 1800's, rum was considered excellent for cleaning hair and keeping it healthy. Brandy was believed to strengthen hair roots.
  • The largest cork tree in the world is in Portugal. It averages over one ton of raw cork per harvest. That's enough to cork 100,000 bottles.
  • The pressure in a bottle of champagne is about 90 pounds per square inch. That's about three times the pressure in automobile tires.
  • The soil of one famous vineyard in France is considered so precious that vineyard workers are required to scrape it from their shoes before they leave for home each night.
  • Foot treading of grapes is still used in producing a small quantity of the best port wines.
  • Thomas Jefferson helped stock the wine cellars of the first five U.S. presidents and was very partial to fine Bordeaux and Madeira.
  • Cork was developed as a bottle closure in the late 17th century. It was only after this that bottles were lain down for aging, and the bottle shapes slowly changed from short and bulbous to tall and slender.
  • The Napa Valley crop described in 1889 newspapers as the finest of its kind grown in the U.S. was...hops.
  • The best temperatures for drinking and enjoying wine are as follows:
    White Wine: chilled (45-55 degrees F) for a few hours in the refrigerator.
    Red Wine: slightly cooler than room temperature (about 65 degrees); Younger fruity reds benefit from chilling.
    Sparkling Wine: thoroughly chilled; refrigerate several hours or the night before serving.
    Dessert Wine: room temperature.
  • A decanter is used mainly to remove sediment from older red wines.  Also, it can be used to open up young red wines.  Otherwise, wine will “breathe” enough in your glass and decanting is not necessary.
  • By swirling your wine, oxygen is invited into the glass and the surface tension of the wine is broken, which allows the aromas of the wine to escape.
  • It's impossible to create a beverage of over 18% alcohol by fermentation alone.
  • Move over, Mickey. Napa valley has replaced Disneyland as California's number one trourist destination, with 5.5 million visitors per year.
  • The purpose of the indentation at the bottom of a wine bottle is to strengthen the structure of the bottle.
  • Bubbles in Champagne were seen by early wine makers as a highly undesirable defect to be prevented.
  • White wine gets darker as it ages while red wine gets lighter.
  • The word "toast," meaning a wish of good health, started in ancient Rome, where a piece of toasted bread was dropped into wine. Thomas Jefferson helped stock the wine cellars of the first five U.S. presidents and was very partial to fine Bordeaux and Madeira.
  • Cork was developed as a bottle closure in the late 17th century. It was only after this that bottles were lain down for aging, and the bottle shapes slowly changed from short and bulbous to tall and slender.
  • The Napa Valley crop described in 1889 newspapers as the finest of its kind grown in the U.S. was...hops.
  • There are many different sizes of wine bottles. The recognized standard wine bottle size is 750ml (.75 liter), however, they can get very large and each shape has its own unique name. Below are the names and sizes relative to the standard wine bottle size
    Standard (.75 liters) equivalent to 1 standard bottle
    Magnum (1.5 liters)  equivalent to 2 standard bottles
    Jeroboam (3 liters)  equivalent to 4 standard bottles
    Rehoboam (4.5 liters)  equivalent to 6 standard bottles
    Methuselah (6 liters)  equivalent to 8 standard bottles
    Salmanazar (9 liters)  equivalent to 12 standard bottles
    Balthazar (12 liters)  equivalent to 16 standard bottles
    Nebuchadnezzar (15 liters)  equivalent to 20 standard bottles