Wine - 101 Truths, Myths and Legends

By Roddy Button and Mike Oliver

Are you a wine connoisseur? Do you prefer to try different makes and vintages or do you have a firm favourite? At the weekend, do you like to open a bottle (or two!) to enjoy with family and friends? Whatever your wine drinking habits, if you like wine, you are certain to enjoy this new trivia book.

Do you know how the American ‘Starboard’ wine came to be named? What did the eminent scientist William Lemeck discover about champagne? Who said, “Whether wine is a nourishment, medicine or poison is a matter of dosage.”? The answers can all be found in Wine – 101 Truths, Myths and Legends.

With sections on names of wines, champagne, colour, history, labels, quotes, cost, and much more, you can’t help but find out some fascinating new facts about wine and the myths and legends surrounding it.

Whether red, white or rose is your tipple, and even if you only ever drink champagne, if you like wine and are interested in the facts and figures associated with its production, you won’t want to without this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Apex Publishing Limited
• Release date: Sep 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781908752284

Book preview

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Amusing Names

In South Africa the wine producer, Charles Back, has been irritating the French Regional Wine Authorities, especially in the Rhone, by using the same grapes as the AC Rhone wines and giving his wines a GOAT name instead of COTE (he keeps lots of goats on his wine farm Fairview in Paarl). So, instead of Cotes du Rhone he produces Goats Do Roam, and for Cotes du Rhone Villages he has Goats Do Roam in Villages. For Cote Rotie he makes Goat Roti (same 100% Syrah as Cote Rotie). He has expanded his range to annoy Bordeaux wines with Bored Doe (he also keeps deer), and Burgundy’s Cote d’Or with his new Goats Door. Long may he continue as they are fine quality wines.

The American wine, Starboard, is so named because Randall Graham, with his vineyards in California, cannot call it port although it has the exact clones of grapes taken from Oporto in Portugal. He also has Syrah clones from Chateauneuf-du-Pape which he calls Old Telegram (aping Vieux Telegraphe (Old Telegraph), a top producer in the AC).

Using a different image of Marilyn Monroe on the label each year, California’s Nova Wines produces a wine called ‘Marilyn Merlot’. The images are licensed to Nova Wines by Marilyn Monroe’s estate.

Australia celebrates and specialises in odd or funny names for wines, though they are usually of good quality. Here are six of the best - By Farr, Mad Fish Bay, Lazy Ballerina, Turkey Flat, Ten Minutes by Tractor, Yarra Yarra and an order to ‘Mount Mary!’ Two Lesser quality slightly rude ones are - Bitch (the back label repeats this 77 times!) and Naked on Roller Skates (with an appropriate picture on the label!).

Even the French are suddenly having a sense of humour when naming new French wine brands - but mainly big sellers from the south. Elephant on a Tightrope (from Vin de Pays d’Oc), Arrogant Frog, and Frogs Piss (both VDQS wines), Vin De Merde (Languedoc-Roussillon), and finally - Fat Bastard (which sells 400,000 cases in the USA alone, a marketing phenomenon).

The Hungarian winery ‘Neszmely’ produces a wine with an unpronounceable (outside Hungary) grape name, so they decided to call it