• There are around 10,000 grape varieties across the world, but only a few dominate, such as Bordeaux Cabernet and Merlot grapes.

  • There are over 800 different components in wine.

  • American oak wood, which can be used for making barrels, is known to impart coconut smells.

The Bamboo editions are releasing a “quiz of wines from our regions” this fall.

Developed in partnership with the Cité du vin de Bordeaux, this very fun guide teaches us a lot of things about grape varieties, aging and wine tasting.

20 Minutes

selected five questions, and asked Véronique Lemoine, the scientific manager of the Cité du Vin behind this quiz, to tell us a little more.

Come test your knowledge ...

Which of these grape varieties is not cultivated in France: Tigger, Raven, Far from the Eye or Grolleau?

"The answer is the tigger, which is the character from the cartoon Winny the Pooh!" The other three do exist, but they are more or less forgotten. There are around 10,000 grape varieties across the world, but only a few dominate, such as the Bordeaux Cabernet and Merlot grape varieties that can be found all over the planet. You should know that you cannot use just any grape variety in France, the Inao (National Institute of Origin and Quality) has drawn up a national catalog with a list of authorized grape varieties, the latter giving emblematic wines of our regions. More than 200 grape varieties are authorized in France, but only three of them occupy a third of the surfaces. However, this list is evolving, and with global warming we are testing, in research vineyards,grape varieties from other parts of the world, and maybe in 50 or 100 years they'll be in this catalog. "

What is the main component of wine: water, all the aromatic components, alcohol, vitamins?

“It's water, which can represent up to 91.5% of the composition of a bottle. But in wine more than 800 different components have been identified. It is sometimes difficult to conceive that things of which the presence is infinitesimal, can have a very great importance on the taste and the odor of the wine. The smell is something very complex, made up of several molecules. This is why when you taste a wine, you can for example smell an apricot smell, because there is a molecule in it that is also present in what makes up the smell of an apricot, but like there are also other molecules in this very complex smell, another person may not smell it, but will instead find something else ... The smell is a kind of mirage that happens in our nose,and our olfactory capacity is certainly the thing that most differentiates humans. "

What smell is not brought to the wine by aging in oak wood: toast, banana, smoke, cloves?

“It's the banana, famous in Beaujolais, and which comes from fermentation. If the odors are very subjective, there are nevertheless three main categories of odors in wines: the primary ones present in the grape varieties, the secondary ones developed during the vinification like the famous banana odor, and finally the tertials created by the natural transformations. that take place during the aging of the wine. During this phase, the wood will communicate its smells to the wine. However, you should know that when you make a barrel, you heat the wood, which releases molecules that are also present in smoke or toast. And we will obtain different results depending on the type of wood used, and the heating used. For example, American oak wood is known to impart coconut smells. Another example,which does not concern wine, some whiskey manufacturers ask for a "crocodile heater", which corresponds to a wood so blackened that it bursts like the skin of a crocodile ... "

Can we make white wine with red grapes?

“Yes, and we do it very often even, in particular in champagne, except when it is marked" blanc de blanc "which means that it was made only with white grapes.

Many champagne contain Pinot Noir, which is best known for making red wine in Burgundy.

In fact, the pulp of red grapes is white, and to make white wine with red grapes, it is enough to squeeze them directly when harvested.

What gives red wine is when the juice is left to macerate for a long time with the skin.

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What is the most caloric: a dry white wine, a rosé wine, a red wine or a sweet wine?

“It's sweet, because that's where we find the most residual sugar.

The grapes used for sweet wines are ultra-concentrated in sugar, you can have up to 400 g / liter of sugar in the juice!

It's huge.

To make a degree of alcohol, the yeasts must consume 17 grams of sugar.

So to make a wine with 14 ° alcohol for example, you need 238 g of sugar.

You can see that there are still quite a few available, hence the sweet and unique side of these wines.

"

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