Weekly Wine Quiz #54 – Grapes Trivia: Merlot
Here comes our next quiz in the Grape Trivia series. Today’s subject – Merlot.
Merlot is one of the most popular grapes in the world, used both for blending and single-varietal wines. Merlot has thin dark blue colored skin, and its taste profile typically includes plums, blackberries, chocolate and tobacco notes. As it is often compared with Cabernet Sauvignon, one of its most popular blending companions, Merlot ripens earlier than Cabernet Sauvignon, has higher sugar content and lesser level of tannins. While France has the biggest plantings of Merlot in the world, Merlot is universally grown in literally every wine producing country – great Merlot wines are produced in Australia, New Zealand, Italy, California, Washington, Long Island, Spain, Chile, Argentina and many other places.
Done with basic facts – let’s proceed with our quiz now, shall we?
Q1: Merlot was named after a:
A. town
B. person
C. bird
D. song
Q2: Name the movie where Merlot was dissed on uncountable number of occasions
Q3: One of the grapes from the list below was assumed to be a Merlot – but it was not. Do you know which grape was mistaken for the Merlot? Bonus question – name the country where confusion took place.
A. Mourvèdre
B. Carignan
C. Carménère
D. Cinsault
Q4: Some place, some time ago, Merlot successfully crossed (by accident) with Cabernet grape, and formed a new grape which produces pretty unique wines. Can you name that grape?
Q5: Chateau Petrus in Pomerol, France makes some of the very best (and most expensive) wines in the world, and those wines are 100% Merlot. Then there is another 100% Merlot wine, made in another country, which is considered a successful competition to Petrus and done very well against it in a number of blind tastings. Can you name that wine?
Have fun, good luck and enjoy your weekend! Cheers!
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İm the first!
1. C bird
2. Sideways
3. C camenere
4. Carberlot
5. Dont know this one. 😦 Among İtalian wines, right?
Very well done! I will not answer your question right now, if you don’t mind : ) , but the answer is coming on Wednesday.
Without googling, I know two.
2. Sideways
3. Carmenere (and for the bonus – Chile)
Excellent, thank you very much for playing! The answers are coming on Wednesday
1. C.
2. Sideways (but the bashing did not occur in the book).
3. C (it was in Chile)
4. Caberlot (and I think it was Cab Franc)
5. This is a tough one, so I will go with an out of the box answer: Lenz Winery on Long Island.
thanks for playing, Jeff! Quite honestly, I never tried Lenz Merlot – well, yeah, never tried Petrus either ( the closest I got to Petrus was Chateau Hosanna, which was outstanding) – but I’m looking for a bit more of an international appeal. This might not be the best question overall, but it was surprisingly difficult to come up with 5 at least somewhat interesting questions about Merlot…
1. C
2. Sideways
3. Carmenere. The confusion occurred in Chile.
I don’t know about 4 and 5.
Thanks for playing! The answers are coming on Wednesday.
I too could only answer two without the assistance of the Google 🙂
2. Sideways
3. Carmenere
I thought ques #1 would be answer A but everyone seems to think otherwise. Looking forward to your answers later in the week.
Thank you.
Thanks for playing! The answers are coming on Wednesday.
İ have the answer for #5. Hope it is not too late. La Macchielo ! Yes? İ just read about super tuscan wines and apparently Bolgheri in Tuscany is the place where fine Merlot based wines are produced. Good study 🙂
This is not what I had in mind, but very solid guess in any case.
But Tua Rita, “Redigaff” is the most expensive….it says.
That is very close – I don’t know about Tue Rita versus Petrus tastings, but this is an excellent choice.