It is Wednesday and time for another quiz. Before we get to this week’s puzzler, we need to first clean up last week’s quiz.

Last week’s quiz was focused on the wine-making technique or practice of adding sugar to the grape must during fermentation.

1. What is this process called? The process is called Chaptalization.

2. Why is it called that? It is named after a French winemaker, Jean-Antoine-Claude Chaptal, who was around during Napoleon’s era. the process has been around a lot longer (since at least the Roman era), but as always, the French take credit for it.

3. Why do winemakers do it? Basically, winemakers add sugar during the fermentation process in order to increase the alcohol level of the wine. It is associated with areas that often have trouble getting the grapes ripe enough to produce enough alcohol naturally.

4. Let’s say you had the equivalent of a standard barrel of wine that was at 21 Brix. How much sugar would you have to add to raise it to the equivalent of 25 Brix?

About 2 pounds
About 4 pounds
About 20 pounds
About 40 pounds

The answer I was going for here was “about 20 pounds.” I took this from the ‘Brewer’s Friend’ website which has a handy calculator. I realize that there is potentially some debate about a ‘standard’ barrel, but I consider a standard barrel to be 55 gallons.

5. In which of the following regions is the process allowed? Answers in bold.

The Sonoma Coast (but only for white wines)
Willamette Valley Pinot Noir
Champagne
Austrian Grüner Veltliner
Swiss Chasselas

That means we only had one winner last week: Anatoli from Talk-a-Vino. Honorable mention must go to Vino in Love since he had everything right, but got bogged down in metric to U.S. conversions.

On to this week’s quiz. Over the past weekend, we celebrated Groundhog Day here in Pennsylvania.  I am not entirely sure why this event still garners any attention, as it seems to be a reason for a bunch of old white guys to dress up in Victorian dress and fondle a very large rodent. A bit perverse if you ask me.

Regardless, it does get one thinking about Spring, which caused me to think about wine (yes, pretty much everything causes me to think about wine, but I needed a segue and this is the best I came up with–so roll with it). So here we go….

1. What are the five main stages of the vine?

2. For each of the stages, what causes the most concern for the vineyard manager/winemaker?

3. Traditionally, in France, what is the time elapsed between the first stage and the last stage?

Harvest (hint) in Alsace