Wine Blending At Laguna Canyon April 18th 2015

Did You Know? - There are 24,000 names for varieties of wine grapes, corresponding to between 5,000 and 10,000 actual varieties. However, only about 150 are commercially important.

Did You Know? - Wine grapes are the single most widely planted fruit crop. There are 20 million acres of grapes planted worldwide, just about enough to supply every adult living in the United States with a bottle a day.

Did You Know? - Portugal is the main source of wine corks. At one time it produced thirteen billion of them per year.

Did You Know? - The Speyer Museum in central Germany contains the oldest bottle of wine in the world, dating back to about 300 A. D.

Did You Know? - Here are some numbers to give you an idea of what goes into your wines. These are average numbers the actual numbers vary widely depending on the type of wine produced.

1 cluster = 75 grapes

1 glass = 1 clusters

1 bottle = 4 clusters

1 bottle = 2 ½ lbs of grapes

1 vine = 40 clusters

1 vine = 10 bottles

1 barrel = 30 vines

1 barrel = 1,200 clusters

1 barrel = 60 gallons

1 barrel = 25 cases

1 barrel = 300 bottles

1 acre = 13 ½ barrels

1 acre = 400 vines

1 acre = 16,000 clusters

1 acre = 332 cases

1 acre = 3,984 bottles

1 acre = 800 gallons

Did You Know? - The most expensive bottle of wine was auctioned at Christies, London, in December 1985. The buyer paid £105,000 (over $180,000 depending on the exchange rate) for a bottle of 1787 Chateau Lafitte red Bordeaux, engraved with Thomas Jefferson's initials. But…. before it was consumed the cork dried out, slid into the bottle and ruined the wine.

Did You Know? - Cork was developed as a bottle closure in the late 17th century. It was only after this that bottles were lain down for aging and the bottle shapes slowly changed from short and bulbous to tall and slender.

Did You Know? - The human foot is ideally suited to crushing grapes. Manual treading breaks the grapes, mashes the skins, and mixes them with the juice but doesn't break open the grape seeds that would give the wine a bitter taste.

Did You Know? - The entire dandelion plant is edible. 100 g of its leaves provides nearly 750% your recommended daily intake of Vitamin K, its flowers can be used to make wine, its root can be used to make a coffee-tasting drink, and it is also used in several soft drinks

Sound: "A Steel Guitar and a Glass of Wine"

Paul Albert Anka, OC (born July 30, 1941) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and actor. Anka became famous in the late 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s with hit songs like "Diana", "Lonely Boy", "Put Your Head on My Shoulder", and "(You're) Having My Baby". He wrote such well-known music as the theme for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and one of Tom Jones's biggest hits, "She's a Lady", as well as the English lyrics for Frank Sinatra's signature song, "My Way" (originally the French song "Comme d'habitude"). He was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame in 2005.