quotations about wine
Unlike every other product that is now manufactured for the table, wine exists in as many varieties as there are people who produce it. Variations in technique, climate, grape, soil and culture ensure that wine is, to the ordinary drinker, the most unpredictable of drinks, and to the connoisseur the most intricately informative, responding to its origins like a game of chess to its opening move.
ROGER SCRUTON
I Drink Therefore I Am
The juice of the grape is the liquid quintessence of concentrated sunbeams.
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK
Melincourt; Or Sir Oran Hautton
Like music, good wine tells a story, it has a narrative.
STING
"Sting: I make good wine as revenge", The Drinks Business, April 12, 2017
Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
attributed, Life of Samuel Johnson
Life's too short to drink cheap wine.
DEBRA MONROE
Newfangled: A Novel
Wine talks. Everyone knows that. Look around you. Ask the oracle at the street corner; the uninvited guest at the wedding feast; the holy fool. It talks. It ventriloquizes. It has a million voices. It unleashes the tongue, teasing out secrets you never meant to tell, secrets you never even knew. It shouts, rants, whispers, It speaks of great things, splendid plans, tragic loves and terrible betrayals. it screams with laughter. It chuckles softly to itself. It weeps in front of its own reflection. It opens up summers long past and memories best forgotten. Every bottle a whiff of other times, other places; every one, from the commonest Liebfraumilch to the imperious 1945 Veuve Clicquot, a humble miracle.... The transformation of base matter into the stuff of dreams. Layman's alchemy.
JOANNE HARRIS
Blackberry Wine
The pairing of food and wine is a complex and highly inexact science. It is fraught with out-moded rules and a propensity for generalizations.
SID GOLDSTEIN
The Wine Lover's Cookbook
Take counsel in wine, but resolve afterwards in water.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1733
I've always wanted to explain that warm, flushed feeling I get when I've had a glass or two of red. Sure, it's the alcohol, but it's different to the disoriented sensation I get when I've guzzled similar amounts of gin and tonics or beer. The answer is simple. Red wine increases sexual arousal in both men and women. Yes, the same stuff that can prevent us from becoming obese, lowers our risk of diabetes, prevents memory loss, helps battle depression and is good for our hearts, we now find out also turns us on.
ROB BUCKHAVEN
"Whey red wine is the best alcohol for great sex", Metro, February 13, 2017
Give me wine to wash me clean
Of the weather-stains of cares.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"From the Persian of Hafiz", Poems
Wine lovers know that putting some effort into understanding and appreciating wine pays big dividends. Skillful tasting unlocks wine's treasures. It adds an extra dimension to the basic routines of eating and drinking, turning a daily necessity into a celebration of life.
MARVIN R. SHANKEN
Wine Spectator's Pocket Guide to Wine
If reassurances could dull pain, nobody would ever go to the trouble of pressing grapes.
SCOTT LYNCH
The Lies of Locke Lamora
Wine is a living creature. You never know what lurks under that cork. Many wines go through puberty, like adorable children morphing into repulsive, sullen adolescents. Pour that Riesling you adored in December today, and instead of exuberant fruit you get attitude: "Fine, you're going to pour me. Like I care."
JENNIFER ROSEN
introduction, The Cork Jester's Guide to Wine
The simple act of opening a bottle of wine has brought more happiness to the human race than all the collective governments in the history of earth.
JIM HARRISON
attributed, Adventures in Wine
Wine hath drowned more men than the sea.
THOMAS FULLER
Gnomologia
There is no better way to enhance your wine knowledge than by tasting and discussing the merits of wine with others tasting the same thing.
KELLY J. HAYES
"Vail Wine Ink column: Wine education is a lifelong pursuit", Post Independent, March 9, 2017
As a material object, wine exists independently of us. But as an experience, we are essential.
MATT KRAMER
"What You Bring to It", Wine Spectator, March 21, 2017
A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover.
CLIFTON FADIMAN
Any Number Can Play
Some rivalries go back centuries. It was the Romans who invented the modern wine-making process, creating great wines that would become renowned across Europe. But the French might counter that it was they who perfected the craft, as the Benedictine monks of Burgundy, Bordeaux and Champagne ably proved.
TONY CROSS
"Italy vs France -- which country's wine is best?", Telegraph, March 10, 2017
Wine is the liquid form of the Goddess Tara, who is the saviour of all living creatures, the mother of all enjoyment and Release, the destroyer of dangers and disease, who burns up all sins and purifies the worlds, O Beloved , who grants all success and increases knowledge, understanding and learning.
WENDY DONIGER
Textual Sources for the Study of Hinduism