I have decided to mix it up a bit this week, but we will get to that in a moment. First, last week’s quiz focused on the Tour de France. Thanks largely to Lance Armstrong, more Americans than not now know about the Grand Boucle. Few, I would guess know about why the Tour started.
Near the turn of the last century, there was a large debate in France which centered around a young military officer, Captain Alfred Dreyfus . The artillery officer was accused and convicted of leaking military secrets to the Germans in 1894 and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island.
Capt. Dreyfus circa 1890 (The Museum of The Art and History of Judaism, Paris, via the New York Times)
A couple of years later, additional evidence came to light that proved conclusively that Dreyfus was wrongly convicted. The problem? Dreyfus, an Alsatian (extra credit answer), was also Jewish. Eventually, it created a political and ideological schism in France between the Dreyfusards (represented most notably by the famed novelist, Émile Zola) and the Anti-Dreyfusards (largely anti-Semites). Without getting too much into the scandal (which is rather fascinating), a leading Dreyfusard was the publisher of the popular sports newspaper, Le Vélo. A group of anti-Dreyfusards chose to start a competing daily, L’Auto (which eventually became L’Équipe– the leading sports daily in France) as a platform to challenge the voice of Le Vélo.
As part of this effort to discredit Le Vélo, L’Auto organized a six day bike race around France to boost its circulation as well as essentially promote their anti-Dreyfusard (and anti-Semetic) position. This race became known as Le Tour de France.
Thus, the correct answer to the question was C. Anti-Semitism. Once again, Talk-a-Vino wins the ‘big’ prize, which is a big bottle of nothing, but he has a rather impressive streak going.
This week I present a question that does not have a definitive ‘correct’ answer–something I used to do to my students all the time back when I was a high school French teacher. They were not very fond of it, but since all of my readers here are (hopefully) more mature than a bunch of 15-18 year-olds, I am not that worried.
There seems to be a little bit of dispute about what you are supposed to do with a cork when it is presented by the waiter at a restaurant. For quite some time, people believed (and some still believe–see HERE) that it was/is beneficial to smell the cork in order to pick up any potential faults in the wine. After a brief Googling of the subject, it seems as though many others feel that smelling the cork is a waste of time (see HERE, for example) since the cork is likely to smell of, well, wait for it…. cork. Others (e.g., HERE) seem to sit on the fence a bit. So that leads us to the first question….
Question #1: What do you do when presented a cork in a restaurant? Why?
Regardless of whether you opt to take a big long whiff of the stopper, most people would agree that it at least used to be convention to cram that little thing up against your beak and inhale. Thus….
Question #2: Why/how do you think that the practice of smelling a cork originated?
Again, no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer–you will be graded on your reasoning and argument (well, I have not been in a classroom for some time now and that phrase flowed a little too easily off my fingers–not sure what that means…).
the drunken cyclist 
I don’t sniff the cork, but I examine the cork because the bottom should be wet and the cork still flexible. As far as the origin of the sniffing, I have no clue.
Meanwhile, I was vacationing for a couple of weeks, thus good to return here. Hope you stop by on Saturday for a celebration … and friends welcome. 🙂
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Excellent response and I can’t wait for post 1000!
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I’m pretty sure the reason why it started is to prevent fraud. By inspecting the cork you can check to see that the winemaker and vintage printed on it matches that of the bottle. It’s not a big deal for 99% of restaurant orders. But if you order a 1963 Chateau Margaux, you want to make sure that they didn’t swap it out with a 1964. (dates/chateau are just for example). I’m sure someone’s come up with newer ways to swindle consumers.
I can’t afford anything past $100, so it’s a non-issue for me. (I missed out on the days of casual approvals of expense accounts.) So I don’t see much value in it, but occasionally I’ll look at it and sniff it to pretend I care.
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Another excellent position, but if I ordered a ’63 Margaux, and they swapped it out for a ’64 I would not mind at all (if I recall correctly, ’63 was a horrible year, but ’64 was rather good)!
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Interestingly enough, I was contemplating this exact question for one of my quizzes, so you beat me to that 🙂
I’m also not going to wine this one, as correct answer was already given by thefoodandwinehedonist – the cork is placed in front of patron in the restaurant to he or she can make sure the name on the label is matching the name on the cork to fight the fraud.
As far as smelling tradition goes, I think this really has no correct answer, as you can’t really picking up faints by just smelling the cork, so it could’ve being born as a casual joke in the restaurant if someone would bring the cork close to the face to better see what is written on it, someone else could’ve thought that the other (affluent, most likely) person is actually sniffing it, and start to copy that. Again, I would bet that my theory is as good as someone else : )
Great quiz. The next one should be about tradition of pouring the taste into the glass and where that came from : )
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Thanks, as always for playing Anatoli! A very well thought out, fantastic response.
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Jeff, you are too kind, as usual. Next time I should type slower and read what I type…
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A 1) when presented with the cork, I take it in my hand, gently squeeze it to see if it’s crumbly and dried out. Why, because that could indicate the wine has gone to crap. If not, I put the cork in my handbag and bring it home, add to my collection then make cork boards for Housewarming and Holiday gifts.
A 2) I think the practice of sniffing the cork was to see if one could sniff out problems with the wine. Better judge is to take a sip of it!
Nice article.
Cheers!
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Thanks for playing! You guys are all well versed in cork inspection!
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I look forward to the answers, though I like Wine Everday’s idea with the cork boards!
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Yes, that is a fantastic idea!
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