Scott's English Success ‘http://www. scottsenglish.com/student/labs/Reading/ | _testpaper.asp Practice Reading Test 1 TEST PAPER DO NOT READ UNTIL YOU BEGIN THE TEST ‘The tests availabe from this site are not official ELTS@ tests. All materials have been colts English Suecess for practice purposes anly and are only representative ofthe style of| tests students will encounter in an official ELTS® exam. Actual real test Scores and results may vary. http://www.scottsenglish.com/ lof 12 12/14/2006 5:50 PMScott's English Success dof 12 READING PASSAGE 1 ‘http://www. scottsenglish.com/student/labs/Reading/ | _testpaper.asp You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-14 which are based on Reading Passage 1 Questions 17 Reading Passage 1 has seven paragraphs A-G From the list of headings below, choose the most suitable heading for each paragraph. Write the appropriate numbers i-x in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet. ist of Headings Award-ninning wine “Temperature vital to production Eatly caution and challenge A.delcious teste Picking the grapes, the only easy step From grape to wine The juice lows quickly Disease brings benefits The role of clmate in taste Obstacles to production 1. Paragraph A 2. Paragraph B 3. Paragraph C 4. Paragraph D 5. Paragraph E 6. Paragraph F 7. Paragraph G 12/14/2006 5:50 PMScott's English Success ‘http://www. scottsenglish.com/student/labs/Reading/ | _testpaper.asp 30f 12 The Grapes of Winter If an artist must suffer to create great art, so does the wine-maker when it comes to producing icewine. Icewine, or Kiswein as the Germans cal it, is the product of frozen grapes. A small portion of the vineyard is left unpicked during the fall harvest’ those grapes are left on the vine until the mercury drops to at least -7°C. At this temperature, the sugar-rich juice begins to freeze. If the grapes are picked in their frozen state and pressed while they are as hard as marbles, the small amount of juice recovered is intensely sweet and high in acidity. The amber dessert wine made from this juice is an ambrosia fit for Dionysus himself ~ very sweet, it combines savours of peach and apricot The discovery of icewine, like most epicurean breakthroughs was accidental. In 1794, wine producers in the German duchy of Franconia made virtue of necessity by pressing juice from frozen grapes, They were amazed by an abnormally high concentration of sugars and acids which until then had been achieved only by drying the grapes on straw mats before pressing or by the effects of Bomrytis cinerea, a disease known as ‘root rot’. Botrytis cinerea afflicts grapes in autumn, usually in regions where there is early morning fog and humid, sunny afternoons. A mushroom-like fungus attaches itself to the berries, puncturing their skins and allowing the juice to evaporate. The world’s great dessert wines, such as Sauternes, Riesling and Tokay Aszy Exsencia, are made from grapes afilicted by this benign disease. It was not until the mid-19"" century in the Rheingau region of northwestern Germany that, winegrowers made conscious efforts to produce icewine on a regular basis, But they found they could not make it every year since the subzero cold spell must last several days to ensure that the berries remain frozen solid during picking and the pressing process, which alone can take up to three days or longer. Grapes are 80 percent water, when this water is frozen and driven off under pressure and shards of ice, the resulting juice is wonderfully sweet. If the ice melts during a sudden thaw, the sugar in each berry is diluted To ensure the right temperature is maintained, in Germany the pickers must be out well before dawn to harvest the grapes. Not all grapes are suitable for icewine, Only the thick-skinned, late-maturing varieties such as Riesling and Vidal can resist such predators as grey rot, powdery mildew, unseasonable warmth, wind, rain and the variety of fauna craving a sweet meal. Leaving grapes on the vine once they have ripened is an enormous gamble. If birds and animals don’t get them, mildew and rot or a sudden storm might, So growers reserve only a small portion of their Vidal or Riesling grapes for icewine, a couple of hectares of views at most, A vineyard left for icewine is a sorry sight, The mesh-covered vines are denuded of leaves and the grapes are brown and shrivelled, dangling like tiny bats from the frozen canes. The stems of the grape clusters are dry and brittle. A strong wind or an ice storm could easily knock the fruit to the ground. A twist of the wrist is all that is needed to pick the grapes. But wine the wind howls through the vineyard, driving the snow before it and the wind chill 12/14/2006 5:50 PM