Meridiana's tour: learn wine in Malta Living

Meridiana opened this morning with a terrace, a glass and bottles to take home. Part two is here: the Malta wine tour game moment the estate was built for. Find Clara on the terrace, tell her "Show me around", and Milan, the vineyard manager, walks you through the whole estate, stop by stop, the camera gliding from the vines to the cellar.

Eight stops, from the vines to the terrace

The tour costs €6 and follows the real route through a wine estate. At each stop you do something with your fingers:

1. The vines. Pick a grape off the vine and taste it.
2. The soil. Rub the soil between your fingers, then drag down to dig until the red earth stops at the pale limestone.
3. The press. Hold to press, and watch the juice run into the tray.
4. The tanks. Hold to lean in: the tank bubbles harder, you hear the yeast at work, and the phone buzzes softly where it can.
5. The cellar. Hold to breathe in the oak, then swipe the Knights' map on the vault to see where the vines are today.
6. The bottling line. Watch the bottles ride the line, then cork one by hand.
7. The lab. Tilt your phone to hold a white, a rosé and a red to the light (or drag, if you'd rather), and see how each is made.
8. The terrace. Your first taste, out over the rows. Then the quiz.

At every stop you do the thing first, then a card opens: Did you know? One real fact, with where it comes from. There are forty facts in all, five for each stop, and the tour deals you ones you haven't heard yet. You can walk the route in order or tap a stop to skip there. Take it again next week and you'll learn new things at the same stops. Once you've heard all forty, any of them can come up.

The facts are real

We kept the facts to things you can check. Some are about winemaking anywhere: why red wine is red (the skins, not the juice), what the bubbling in a tank is (yeast turning sugar into alcohol), why corked bottles lie down. Others are about Malta: the islands' own grapes, Ġellewża and Girgentina; vine soils that are rarely deeper than a metre, over limestone; a harvest that starts in August, earlier than further north; and the DOK Malta, DOK Gozo and IĠT labels on the bottles. Wines of Malta, the islands' wine body, is a good place to read more.

And one about the estate itself: Meridiana's vines grow at Ta' Qali, on land that was a Second World War airfield. The estate's own site tells its story.

Take a friend

If a friend is already on the tour at the estate, Clara offers to let you join them. You pay your own €6, hear the same facts, and follow them from stop to stop; their stop shows at the top of your screen. At the end you each take the quiz and see each other's score.

The quiz

Once all eight stops are done come four questions, drawn from the facts you met on this tour, each answer with its own little picture, in an order dealt just for you. You answer one at a time, and after each one you see whether you were right and the fact behind it. The game scores it on the server, once, so there's no trying again for a better mark the same day. Then Today you learned: every fact from the tour on one card.

Get three or more right and you earn a stamp. Get all four and you earn another.

Your wine passport

Your stamps go into a new wine passport, on the Badges tab of your profile. It shows how many of the estate's thirty stamps you have, the facts you've learned out of forty, and your stage, with what each stage opens at the estate:

• Curious, from your first visit: the tour and tastings
• Taster, at 4 stamps: oak barrels at the blending bench
• Enthusiast, at 10: adopt a vine, and the reserve list
• Connoisseur, at 16: the reserve cellar and a vertical tasting, and judging the blend competition
• Sommelier, at 22: a badge on your profile, the wine club board, hosting a club night, and opening a bottle with a sabre

Today there are four stamps to earn: your first full tour, a good quiz, a perfect quiz, and all forty facts. The next parts add more for tasting like a sommelier, blending your own wine and looking after a vine of your own, so the passport keeps filling as the estate grows.

One tour a day

You can take the tour once a day. If you leave halfway, to answer a friend or grab a ride home, come back later and it picks up at the stop where you left off, without paying again.

Questions people ask

How much is the tour?

€6, paid when you start. Coming back the same day to finish costs nothing.

Is there wine on the tour?

Just one small taste on the terrace at the end, a third of a glass. It counts a little towards your drink level, and if you've had too much already Clara brings water instead.

Can I look up the quiz answers?

The questions come from forty facts and change every time, and the answers are shuffled, so the best way to do well is to read the cards as you go.

Where do I see my stamps?

Tap your picture, then Badges: your wine passport is there, with your stage and how many stamps until the next one.

New here? Start with what Malta Living is, then play Malta Living free.