Good Morning!

About a year and a half ago I found on Amazon.com a wine game called World Wine Challenge and I ordered it. I was intrigued because the game said really get to understand the world of wine, test yourself and friends on all levels of wine education. The package came in the mail and it was a CD and I popped it in the laptop and you can select what level you want to answer questions from. You have 3 choices, Wine Drinker, Wine Student and Wine Master.

Me being me, I chose the Wine Master and this test/game is 200 questions. It takes me about an hour plus and I scored a 27%. This was just a brutal wake up call of how much I really did not know. I will gave myself a break and did not call myself a total dummy but these questions here hard and I had no idea about wines from Switzerland or the geography of South Africa, I had no clue about if I was standing in a vineyard in Burgundy and started walking south what vineyard would I walk directly into….Seriously, I felt like a dipshit.

So, the next morning I was ready to try again and I choose to take the test as a Wine Drinker and it was 25 questions and I hoped to do much better. The questions were more based off of info you might learn if you really are a causal wine drinker, I scored an 82%. I felt vindicated and thought it was not a perfect score and I am a perfect wine drinker I vowed to play this trivia game until I would be able to get at least an 80% on the Wine Master test.

I kept a pad of paper beside me and what I would not have a clue about a term or question, I wrote it down and did my homework after receiving my low score. I chugged through the Wine student section of the game/test and every week I would score a bit higher and the questions became more obscure and I would get a few more questions correct. The funniest thing about the game is that when you get the answer correct it makes the sound of a wine glass when you flick it with a finger, that really cool bing kinda sound then when you miss a question it makes the sound as if you just shattered the wine glass!

I have learned so much about Austrialia, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, US and Canada, their wine laws, history and geography it’s been a great lesson for someone as green as myself. I am not sure how often I will be ask were a Vouvray wine is originated or if a Methuselah bottle is bigger than Magnum or what year did Washington State pass a law that controls use of the word “reserve” on a wine labeled from their state.

The World Wine Challenge must have been developed around 2006 or 2007 because many of the questions are about total wine production from countries and states around that time. I have also found some contradicting information on the net when I have been researching, so thing may have changed since it was developed.

I would suggest anyone who wants to geek out on wine info, get the game….it has take me 1.5 years taking the test/game on a weekly basis and I can say I am so close to the 80% goal, today I scored a 77% on the Wine Master category. It still makes me mad to not have mastered this World Wine Challenge, but sometimes it makes me giggle to know that if the highest planted grape in California is Chardonnay and the most planted grape in South Africa is Cabernet Sauvignon…of course at some point these facts will change and I will be wrong again and I will have more to learn!

Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi