{"id":481,"date":"2021-11-09T17:30:03","date_gmt":"2021-11-09T17:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cocktailians.com\/2021\/11\/brandy-trivia-part-1.html"},"modified":"2021-11-09T17:30:03","modified_gmt":"2021-11-09T17:30:03","slug":"brandy-trivia-part-1-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/?p=481","title":{"rendered":"Brandy Trivia! Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Similar to the rum (parts 1<\/a>, 2<\/a>, 3<\/a>, 4<\/a>) and gin (parts 1<\/a>, 2<\/a>, 3<\/a>, 4<\/a>, 5<\/a>) trivia quizzes I wrote for the world's best online trivia league<\/a> in past years, I recently wrote a quiz on brandy. I figure readers might be interested in this, so I'll include the questions and my recap notes at the end.<\/p>\n

I've obscured the answers by putting them in white text on a white background; just highlight the area between the brackets to see what's there, and click on small pictures to embiggen them.<\/p>\n

Thanks to everyone – all 511 players! — who took the quiz when it was on LearnedLeague last month, and it was especially fun to see participation from beverage-industry folks like Craig Ganzer<\/a> (who won), friend of the blog Damon Dyer<\/a> (who went 12 for 12, placing seventh) and Skip Tognetti<\/a> (who did very well indeed, tying for ninth place.)<\/p>\n

I'd be remiss as well if I failed to thank Ms.<\/a> Franky<\/a> Marshall<\/a>, who was my first contact on beginning to smith this quiz when I was just kicking around ideas for questions. She is not only a mensch and a good egg, but a fount of wisdom about all things distilling, spiritous, and mixological.<\/p>\n

1.  Actually, it's only Cognac if it comes from the Cognac region of France; otherwise, it's just brandy. But the Cognac region is divided into six growth regions for its grapes, or crus<\/em>: Fins Bois, Bon Bois, Bois Ordinaires, Borderies, Grande ___________, and Petite ___________. What one word fills both these blanks?<\/strong><\/p>\n

[CHAMPAGNE<\/span>]<\/p>\n

Gotta start with the most famous brandy out there, bien s\u00fbr<\/em>? (Plus it was easier than trying to write around \u201cCognac\u201d for an entire quiz.)<\/p>\n

The \u201cActually\u2026\u201d at the top of the question was, of course, trying to clue you into [Champagne<\/span>]. (And in an early version of this question, showed me that the LL website doesn\u2019t do strikethrough text, leading to some wacky formatting.) The sparkling wine is made in its eponymous region in northeastern France, east of Paris, while Cognac is made some 300-odd miles away, around the town of the same name in southwestern France…so what do they have in common? The brandy isn\u2019t made from [Champagne<\/span>] wine, but the two most favored crus<\/em> of Cognac have chalky limestone soil that\u2019s similar to that of the [Champagne<\/span>] region<\/a>. If you see \u201cFine [Champagne<\/span>]\u201d on a Cognac label, it\u2019s a blend of brandies from the Grande [Champagne<\/span>] (at least 50%) and Petite [Champagne<\/span>] crus<\/em>. (R\u00e9my Martin is notable for producing only Fine [Champagne<\/span>] Cognac.)<\/p>\n

Much more on the various growth regions here<\/a> from Simon Difford and here<\/a> from Cognac Expert<\/em>, and an excellent rundown of all things Cognac<\/a> from Eater<\/em>\u2019s Jake Emen.<\/p>\n

The original version of the question included this map<\/a> of the regions, but some testers wisely pointed out that it wasn\u2019t necessary.<\/p>\n

2.  The French marc<\/em>, the Spanish orujo<\/em>, the Italian grappa<\/em>, and the Hungarian T\u00f6rk\u00f6lyp\u00e1linka<\/em> are all brandies made by distilling the remaining seeds, skin, stems, and pulp after grapes are pressed for winemaking. What is the most common name for this residue?<\/strong><\/p>\n

[POMACE<\/span>]<\/p>\n

Not just the stuff between Lucy\u2019s toes<\/a>, [pomace<\/a><\/span>] consists of everything left behind after the grape juice is drained off to become wine. Some wineries use it as animal feed or fertilizer, but as we see here it can be distilled into some interesting brandies<\/a>. Grappa<\/em> can be shockingly rough and fiery or refined and elegant, and makes a good digestivo<\/em><\/a> or added to espresso for a caff\u00e8 corretto<\/em><\/a>. Marc<\/em> is more often aged, and it\u2019s used to wash the rind of the sublimely aromatic\/stinky Epoisses de Bourgogne<\/a> cheese.<\/p>\n

I included a scoring note not to accept MUST or LEES as correct answers; must<\/a> is the direct result of pressing grapes, with juice and all the solids included; the solids are the [pomace<\/span>] and make up 7-23% of the must. Lees<\/a> are sediment in wine, most of which are dead yeast cells left over from fermentation.<\/p>\n

Like the first question, I originally included a picture<\/a> of [pomace<\/span>] for color, but it wasn\u2019t necessary, so I saved it for the recap.<\/p>\n

3.  The most famous style of French brandy is Cognac. What is the name of Cognac's more rustic cousin? It's also named after where it's made, in southwestern France's Gascony region. This grape brandy is distilled once (contrasting with Cognac's double distillation), and is usually bottled at a higher proof than Cognac.<\/strong><\/p>\n

[ARMAGNAC<\/span>]<\/p>\n

I like Cognac just fine, but I'm a big, big [Armagnac<\/a><\/span>] fan. It just has so much character, generally from the single-shot distillation, the higher bottling proof, the use of different grapes<\/a>, and the greater prevalence of vintage releases and smaller producers. More on the contrasts between Cognac and [Armagnac<\/span>] here<\/a> from Wine Enthusiast<\/em>\u2019s Tammie Teclemariam, and here<\/a> from Cognac Prunier\u2019s Alice Burnez, who also points out that Cognac is distilled with a pot still and [Armagnac<\/a><\/span>] is distilled on a column still<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite trips was just about four years ago, when I visited Gascony during the Armagnac<\/span> distillation season<\/a> and went to a brandy festival (where I was lucky enough to sample a hot Armagnac<\/span> punch<\/a>, watch a fistfight break out on the dais at the gala dinner, see mobile stills on trailers<\/a>, and wander around with a glass around my neck and taste a whole bunch of interesting brandies<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Similar to the rum (parts 1, 2, 3, 4) and gin (parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) trivia quizzes I wrote for the world's best online trivia league in past years, I recently wrote a quiz on brandy. I figure readers might be interested in this, so I'll include the questions and my recap notes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ingredients","category-seen-elsewhere"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}