This is a Quiz for Fizz. We've lined up spectacular prizes with a total value of just under £1,000.
For the winner there's a methuselah of Bollinger Special Cuvee - a monster eight-bottle trophy of the beautifully rich and firm non-vintage champagne for which the fine house of Bollinger is renowned. And, for six runners-up, there is a bottle of Bollinger RD 1988 - champagne from an outstanding vintage, matured on the lees for a decade until disgorgement earlier this year. Produced in extremely limited quantities, RD is an exceptional treat.
All you have to do is send your answers to Mary Dowey, Features Department, Irish Times, D'Olier Street, Dublin 2, to arrive not later than Wednesday, January 5th, 2000. The seven highest-scoring readers will be named on Saturday, January 22nd, along with the correct answers, and those superb bottles will be dispatched the following week. Just make sure this part of the paper doesn't get bundled into the bin with crumpled Christmas wrapping and turkey bones until the deed is done. Have fun!
1. Name the three grapes from which champagne may be made
2. Which red wine estate is generally regarded as the most prestigious in Burgundy?
3. What do the letters DOCG stand for?
4. What is the name of the sparkling wine from the New Zealand winery Cloudy Bay?
5. Which Australian producer is nicknamed The Baron of the Barossa?
6. Which town is famous for its port lodges?
7. John fought in the Battle of the Boyne, then fled. Jean-Baptiste was mayor of Bordeaux, where the family name lives on in wine. What is that name?
8. Who is reputed to have enjoyed an imperial-pint-sized bottle of Champagne Pol-Roger on a daily basis?
9. How many standard-sized bottles of wine are contained in a salmanazar?
10. What do wine tasters mean by `length'?
11. Georg Riedel has used scientific data on the taste zones of the tongue to build a business empire. What business is he in?
12. Name a popular wine writer and broadcaster whose first career was as an opera singer.
13. Which champagne is known as `The Widow'?
14. What is AXR1?
15. What is Ireland's bestselling wine?
16. Who said: `The English have a miraculous power of turning wine into water'?
17. Who is known as `the champagne girl' in the London wine trade?
18. La Landonne and La Turque are well-known single vineyards in which wine appellation?
19. What is the film of yeast which develops during the production of fino sherry called?
20. Name one of the Irish doctors involved in wine in Margaret River, Western Australia.
21. Champagne keeps best when stored upright. True or false?
22. Where in the wine world is Green Valley?
23. What is the connection between Casa Lapostolle in Chile, Marques de Grinon in Spain, Ornellaia in Italy and Chateau L'Angelus in SaintEmilion?
24. What is the Latin name for the main species of vine on which wine depends?
25. In 1992, after sliding standards had caused a slump in the champagne market, one house publicly committed itself to high standards by publishing a Charter of Ethics and Quality. Which?
26. In the 1970s he set out to prove that the Languedoc was capable of producing a world-class wine - and for many years he has had a house in Cork. Who?
27. Which three grapes are traditionally used in the production of Cava?
28. Dr Richard Smart is a controversial figure in wine circles. In which field does his expertise lie?
29. Which Irish wine shop was overall winner in the Gilbeys/NOffLA Off-licence of the Year 2000 awards?
30. What does the term `ripasso' mean?
31. He was by far Ireland's biggest consumer of Veuve Clicquot champagne until relatively recently. Who?
32. "They so closely resemble a blend of cold chalk soup and alum cordial with an additive or two to bring it to the colour of children's pee," Kingsley Amis wrote in The Green Man Which wines was he describing so damningly?
33. What letters stand for the chemical compound known as cork taint?
34. What is the name of the Chilean super-premium wine produced in a joint venture between Errazuriz and Robert Mondavi?
35. Who said: `There is no more virtue in not minding what you eat and drink than in not minding whom you go to bed with'?
36. Varietal wines are generally regarded as a New World development - but which French region embraced varietals long ago?
37. Irishman David O'Brien swapped the world of racehorses for life as a wine producer. What is his property called?
38. Richard Geoffroy trained as a doctor before becoming a champagne-maker - no great surprise, he says, because medicine and champagne are both life-enhancing. Which prestige cuvee is he responsible for?
39. Which is the main grape used in Banyuls?
40. Through her granny - a Galway Burke - she visited Ireland often as a child. An army wife, then mayor of a town in northern France, wine changed her life. Who is she, and which estate does she run?
41. Name two champagne houses which still ferment their wines in oak casks.
42. In 1979 three members of the Belgian Thienpont family bought Le Pin - the Pomerol property whose 1982 vintage sold not long ago for £2,500 a bottle. How much did they pay for it - one million, five million or fifteen million French francs?
43. What is the name of Australia's most celebrated wine?
44. Somebody involved in the revival of Hungary's sweet wine Tokaji said there was no doubt it would be a huge success in the US because it increases sexual potency. Who?
45. Marilyn Monroe said she liked a glass of champagne in the morning to `warm the body'. Which champagne?
46. Where is the wine region Ycoden-Daute-Isora?
47. In exile, Napoleon used to enjoy a glass of Vin de Constance. Which winery has revived the Cape's sweet wine tradition?
48. What is Nyetimber?
49. Which opera tells us `His majesty champagne is king'?
50. Which Portuguese grape name translates as `dog strangler'?