Wine Trivia: 40 Questions With Answers and a Host Plan

Wine trivia answers should fit in one breath, and almost all of them do. The few that start arguments, such as the most planted grape, the place wine was first made and the 1976 white, turn on how the question is worded.

How Do You Run a Wine Trivia Night, in One Paragraph?

Split the room into teams of two to four and play five rounds of eight questions: grapes, places, bottles and labels, tasting and winemaking, then history. The host reads each question twice, teams write on a sheet numbered 1 to 8, and sheets swap for marking at the end of each round. Each correct answer scores one point, and one closest-number question breaks a tie. The level tags give 16 easy, 15 medium and 9 hard questions, so newcomers score early. Allow about ten minutes a round, marking included, and an hour for the quiz with one short break.

Round 1: Grapes

Grape questions open the night because most of the answers are printed on bottle labels. If a team gives a grape's other name, such as Pinot Meunier for Meunier, give the point. The Glera grape guide explains why the grape behind Question 4 changed its name.

Question	Answer	Level
1. Syrah and Shiraz: one grape or two?	One grape with two names. Shiraz is the usual name in Australia.	Easy
2. Chablis is made from which grape?	Chardonnay.	Easy
3. Which three grapes make almost all Champagne?	Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Meunier. The rules allow a few others, but they are rare.	Easy
4. Prosecco is made mainly from which grape?	Glera. The grape itself was called Prosecco until Italy renamed it.	Medium
5. Cabernet Sauvignon is a cross of which two grapes?	Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc.	Medium
6. Noir means black. Which plant does Pinot refer to?	The pine: the bunches are tight and shaped like pine cones.	Medium
7. Barolo is made from which grape?	Nebbiolo.	Medium
8. Which red grape leads the vineyards of Rioja?	Tempranillo.	Easy

Quick check

One question on what you just read

Prosecco is made mainly from which grape?

AGleraBChardonnayCMoscato

Tap an answer to see how you did.

Round 2: Places

Every answer in this round is a place name that turns up on labels and wine lists. If a team names the region instead of the country, as in Douro for Question 12, give the point: it is the more precise answer.

Question	Answer	Level
9. Which country has the earliest known winemaking sites, about 8,000 years old?	Georgia, near Tbilisi, from around 6000 BCE.	Medium
10. Sauternes, the sweet white, comes from which French region?	Bordeaux.	Easy
11. Tokaji Aszú, a sweet wine made with noble rot, comes from which country?	Hungary.	Easy
12. Port comes from which country?	Portugal.	Easy
13. Sherry takes its name from which Spanish town?	Jerez de la Frontera. Sherry is the English version of Jerez.	Medium
14. Marlborough, famous for Sauvignon Blanc, is in which country?	New Zealand.	Easy
15. Which white grape covers much of La Mancha, the plain of central Spain?	Airén. Much of the crop goes into brandy or bulk wine.	Hard
16. Which South American country's vines have mostly escaped phylloxera, a root-feeding insect?	Chile. Desert, ocean and the Andes have helped keep the pest out, so most vines grow on their own roots.	Hard

Round 3: Bottles and Labels

Large bottles hold a set number of standard bottles, so a team that knows the litres can work out the count. If a team gives the litres instead of the bottle count, or the reverse, accept it when the two match. The wine bottle sizes chart lists every name from the split up, and the Rioja wine guide explains the ageing words behind Question 22.

Question	Answer	Level
17. How many millilitres are in a standard wine bottle?	750 ml.	Easy
18. How many standard bottles fit in a magnum?	Two: 1.5 litres.	Easy
19. How many litres does a Methuselah hold?	6 litres, or eight bottles.	Medium
20. Which is bigger, a Salmanazar or a Balthazar?	A Balthazar: 12 litres against 9.	Hard
21. How many standard bottles does a Rehoboam hold?	Six: 4.5 litres.	Hard
22. Which Rioja label word means the longest ageing: Crianza, Reserva or Gran Reserva?	Gran Reserva. A red ages at least five years, two of them in oak.	Medium
23. What does the vintage on a label tell you?	The year the grapes were harvested.	Easy
24. What does Blanc de Blancs mean on a sparkling wine?	White from whites: made only from white grapes, in Champagne usually Chardonnay.	Medium

Round 4: Tasting and Winemaking

Play this round with a glass in hand, because three of its answers can be seen, smelled or felt on the spot. Questions 30 and 31 come from malolactic fermentation, and Question 32 from noble rot.

Question	Answer	Level
25. Name the five S's of wine tasting.	See, swirl, sniff, sip, savor.	Easy
26. Why do tasters swirl the glass?	To mix in air and lift the aromas toward the nose.	Easy
27. True or false: the tip of the tongue tastes sweet and the back tastes bitter.	False. Every part of the tongue picks up every taste; the tongue map is a myth.	Medium
28. What makes a young red feel dry and puckery?	Tannin, which binds to the proteins in saliva.	Easy
29. Where does red wine get its colour?	From the grape skins. The juice of most dark-skinned grapes is greenish-white.	Easy
30. Malolactic fermentation turns which acid into which?	Tart malic acid into softer lactic acid.	Hard
31. Which compound gives some Chardonnay a buttery smell?	Diacetyl, made during malolactic fermentation.	Hard
32. What is the fungus behind Sauternes and Tokaji called?	Botrytis cinerea, or noble rot. It dries the grapes and concentrates their sugar.	Medium

Round 5: Wine History

History answers are the ones guests repeat on the way home, so read each answer line in full. If a team says California or Napa for Question 35, give the point.

Question	Answer	Level
33. True or false: Dom Pérignon invented sparkling wine.	False. The oldest recorded sparkling wine, Blanquette de Limoux, dates from 1531, long before his time.	Medium
34. In what year did the Judgment of Paris tasting take place?	1976.	Medium
35. At that tasting, which country's wines came top in both red and white?	The United States: a red and a white from Napa, California.	Easy
36. Who organised the Judgment of Paris?	Steven Spurrier, a British wine merchant in Paris, with his colleague Patricia Gallagher.	Hard
37. Phylloxera wrecked Europe's vineyards in the late 1800s. Which continent did it come from?	North America.	Medium
38. How were Europe's vineyards saved from phylloxera?	By grafting European vines onto resistant American roots, called rootstock.	Medium
39. The word sommelier first described which job?	A pack-animal driver, then a court official in charge of moving supplies.	Hard
40. Armenia's Areni-1 cave holds the oldest known what?	Winery, dated to about 4100 BCE.	Hard

Which Wine Trivia Answers Start Arguments?

Four famous answers depend on how the question is worded: the most planted grape, the first wine, the 1976 white and the size of a Jeroboam. Word each one as the "How to rule" column says, or leave it out of the quiz.

Question	Why teams argue	How to rule
What is the most planted grape?	In the OIV's world count, Kyohō, a table grape, covers the most land, and Cabernet Sauvignon leads the wine grapes. Older surveys put Airén first.	Ask for the most planted wine grape and accept Cabernet Sauvignon.
Where was wine first made? (Question 9)	Georgia has the earliest known grape-wine sites. Older jars from Jiahu in China held a drink of rice and fruit that may not have included grapes.	Keep the word known in the question and accept Georgia.
Did Napa win both 1976 tastings? (Question 35)	The official result put a Napa red and a Napa white first. A 2026 recount of the scores by one Master of Wine found the white tied with a French Meursault.	Accept the United States, California or Napa. Mention the tie if a guest raises it.
How big is a Jeroboam?	It holds 3 litres in Champagne and more in Bordeaux.	Leave it out, or accept a size only when the team names the region.

The planting figures sit in the most planted grapes in the world, and the digs behind Question 9 in the Georgia wine guide.

How Do You Score Wine Trivia and Pick Team Names?

Give one point per correct answer, let teams swap sheets to mark each other, and settle a tie with one closest-number question. Decide before Round 1 whether multi-part answers, such as Questions 3, 5 and 25, earn half points, and say the rule out loud.

The tie-breaker

Ask each tied team to write down how many litres a Nebuchadnezzar holds. The answer is 15 litres, as much as 20 standard bottles, and the closest guess wins. If two guesses are equally close, the team with more hard questions right takes the night.

Teams, glasses and the host's copy

A wine pun makes a quick team name that the host can read aloud: Pinot Envy, Grape Expectations, Sip Happens or The Decanters.

If you pour with the quiz, serve one small taste per round and put water on every table; how much wine to pour gives the measures. Match the glass to the round where you can: a Prosecco for Round 1, a Rioja Crianza for Round 3.

The host keeps the only copy, printed or on a phone, and teams need blank sheets numbered 1 to 8. For a second night, turn common wine myths into a true-or-false round, or play a blind wine tasting game instead. The wine tasting party guide covers glasses and food, and the beginner's hub lists the next steps for new drinkers.

In the Sommy app, the Wine 101 course covers tannin and several of the Round 1 grapes. The app's AI-guided tasting walks you through look, smell and taste after you photograph a label, and saves your notes to a tasting journal. Read Round 1 aloud tonight to whoever is at the table, and keep score on a napkin.

Sources

1. History of wine — Wikipedia
2. Judgment of Paris (wine) — Wikipedia
3. Wine bottle: standard and large-format sizes — Wikipedia
4. Champagne: grapes, history and the Dom Pérignon legend — Wikipedia
5. Classification: Crianza, Reserva and Gran Reserva ageing rules — Consejo Regulador DOCa Rioja