If you know your Chateau Yquem from your Amethystos, you can win a prize

The editor has put me on the spot by asking for a wine quiz. Does he want to know how much I have taught his readers, I wonder, or just how little I know myself? I have always made it absolutely clear that my wine column is about God, the environment, music, marriage and Sam the Horse, in that order. If, on occasion, I refer to the bottles that help to focus my thoughts on those things, it is only by way of focusing your thoughts on them, too. Still, a wine quiz has been asked for, and so a wine quiz is what you're going to get, and Corney & Barrow has supplied not only the prize but also a few of the questions.

I begin with a question which is a gift to readers of my recent columns - at least to those who cut the columns out and paste them, as they should, into a scrapbook kept for the purpose:

Chateau Artigues-Arnaud is a cru bourgeois from Pauillac: of which 5th growth chateau is it the second wine?

Now for your wine GCSE:

What does Trockenbeerenauslese mean?

If three guests can be catered for with one 75cl bottle of champagne, how many can be invited when you crack open a Nebuchadnezzar?

Two of the three permitted grape varieties for champagne are red: can you name them?

In which country does the grape variety called mencIa grow?

Which vineyard stands to Pernand as Le Musigny stands to Chambolle?

In which famous modern novel is Chateau Suduiraut referred to, as a wine of which the hero would not have heard?

What champagne does James Bond drink in Die Another Day?

What is the most southerly wine-growing region in the world?

Having successfully completed that test, you now proceed to the really difficult questions:

In your new life as a royal butler, you are asked to serve Chateau Yquem with the first course of foie gras. To what authority do you refer, and with what form of words, when reproving your royal employer's taste?

On being sacked from that job, and failing to interest TV or the tabloids, you are nevertheless able to find employment as butler in an Oxbridge college. What wines would you set out for dessert, and at what place on the table? What would you do to ensure that the dons and their guests are properly served?

Having made the unpardonable mistake of decanting the 1963 Quinta da Noval through a silver sieve, you find yourself moving yet further down the social scale. In your new life as a Roman Catholic priest, you offer the sacramental chalice to the first communicant, who refuses to let go until he has drunk the lot. What do you do?

Defrocked, you nevertheless succeed in passing yourself off as a wine critic in a once-respectable national weekly. Your editor forbids you to mention religion or to write the names of saints. Which wines will you be unable to recommend to your readers?

Moving now in journalistic circles, you find yourself drinking in Fleet Street. In which wine bar will you find the full variety of serious wines, and who must you be careful to avoid there?

Sacked for refusing to recommend industrial chardonnay, you now man the telephone desk at Corney & Barrow. What arguments will you use to persuade your new employer to stay in its beautiful old vicarage, to reduce the volume of its trade, and to keep the best wine for domestic consumption?

Adrift now on the streets of London, you strive to keep warm by sipping a sweet fortified wine called La Commandaria. From where is this wine imported, and how come you can afford it?

Rescued at last by Sam the Horse, which of the following wines would you choose as his reward, given his well-known predilection for cheap rose: Chateau Giscours, Domaine de Limbardie, pelure d'oignon, Blauer Burgunder, Coteaux de Tricastin, Amethystos?

Corney & Barrow also submitted the following question:

What does ABC mean in the wine world?

Fortunately C&B also provided the answer, and I shall give it to you now lest you be tempted to enter the wine world by some other route than the disgraceful one I have mapped out for you. Apparently it means Anything But Chardonnay, and denotes the professional fatigue with which the global wine economy is infecting this last remaining trade in a quintessentially local product. If you cannot answer any of the above questions, but nevertheless recognise ABC as a true description of your outlook, then all is not lost for you.

Come to think of it, ABC might just as well have meant Anything But Cabernet-Sauvignon, which describes a rebellion in the matter of red wine as justified as that in the matter of white. In both cases, you should always follow the principle of the true artist: content is the means, but the end is form. Or, as Wilde put it: in matters of the greatest importance, it is style and not sincerity that counts. Remember that when you buy your Christmas wine.

Roger Scruton writes a fortnightly wine column for the New Statesman

The winner will receive a magnum of Delamotte Brut NV champagne and six champagne flutes.

Please send your answers to:
New Statesman Christmas
Wine Competition,
Victoria Station House,
191 Victoria Street,
London SW1E 5NE.
Closing date: Friday 10 January 2003

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