Wine is a fascinating enough beverage in itself. But the lore and trivia that surround it are even more intriguing. The facts help put it in
perspective.
Check these stats:
Ninety-five percent of all the wine made each year is consumed before the next harvest.
There are approximately 58 million bubbles in one bottle of Champagne.
Because it is aged in wood, more than 19 million bottles of cognac evaporate into the air each year over Cognac, France.
The pressure in a bottle of Champagne is 90 pounds per square inch, about that in a truck tire.
More than 40 percent of the annual Beaujolais crop is Beaujolais Nouveau.
E&J Gallo makes as much wine in six minutes as does Chateau Petrus in one year.
Twenty-five percent of the British drink four times as much Champagne each year as does the entire population of the U.S.
Wine corks contain 40 million nitrogen-filled cells per cubic centimeter. A cork can be compressed to half its size and recover its
original dimensions within hours.
A la francaise:
Until about 1850, all French Champagne was sweet.
France is the major importer of port (the French take 40 percent of all port produced), and there it is used as an aperitif.
More semillon than sauvignon blanc is planted in Bordeaux, and more merlot than cabernet sauvignon, though we commonly
think it is the reverse.
The original Champagne coupe (or saucer-shaped glass) was fashioned by a porcelain maker in Sevres, France, after a mold
made off Marie Antoinette's breast.
Far more merlot than cabernet sauvignon (a nearly 2-to-1 ratio) is planted throughout Bordeaux, though we call cabernet
sauvignon 'the Bordeaux grape.'
The average American drinks about one-tenth the wine the average Frenchman drinks.
During World War I, the owners and workers and their families of Champagne Pommery lived in the cellars of the winery below
ground as protection from bombardment. An entire opera was once performed there during a siege.
The famous gewurztraminer of Alsace got its start in the Italian village of Tramin in the Alto Adige, Italy.
All'Italia:
Forty percent of Italy is mountainous. Another 40 percent is hilly. That is why this country, 25 percent smaller than the state of
California, but with vines planted in all of its 20 provinces, produces one-fifth of all the wine made in the world. (France produces
another one-fifth.)
Closer to home:
Commercial wine is made in all 50 of the United States.
The first wine to be sold in the U.S. after Prohibition was Virginia Dare, a blend of American grapes.
In 1859, the state of Ohio produced one-third of all U.S.-made wines. California only made one-half as much wine as Ohio that
year.
There were more wineries in the United States before Prohibition than there were 15 years ago (more than 700 in 1920 vs. about
600 in 1988).
Nine-tenths of all American wine is made in California (8 percent is made in New York).
The first officially designated American Viticultural Area was Augusta, Mo.
Together, Napa and Sonoma counties produce only 10 percent of all California wine.
Et al.:
As a group, Russia, Georgia and Ukraine are the fourth-largest producer of wine in the world.
The sixth-largest European wine producer is Romania (after Italy, France, Spain, Russia and Germany).
The virtues of pruning vines to reduce yields and improve wine quality are owed to the donkey of the Bishop of Tours, France, in
the 4th century. The animal lunched off the vines one day and the subsequent wine was noticed to be better.
Only American oak is used to age Spanish sherry.
More Cognac is consumed in Hong Kong than any city in the world.
A blind tasting is one in which the tasters are not told what the wines are. A vertical tasting is a series of vintages of the same
wine. A horizontal tasting is a comparison of the same vintage of different wines.
The speed at which a Champagne cork exits the bottle is 42-feet per second.
In ancient times, wine was thick and sweet and made from partially dried grapes. To drink it, the ancients would often dilute it with
sea water.
Wine professionals spit out the wine they sample during a tasting. The longest spit on record was 11 feet 6 inches—directly into a
spittoon—by a member of the Port trade.
All the essential vitamins are found in a glass of wine.
Antarctica is the only continent on Earth on which wine is not produced.
On American wine labels, sauvignon blanc and fume blanc are the same thing.
Germany is as far north as Newfoundland —a cool climate—which explains why more white wine is made than red.
There is no commercial winery in Tibet.
---------------------------------------
See the front page, left side directory of www.WindyCityMediaGroup.com for Dining Out listings.