quotations about wine
The social drinking of wine, during or after a meal, and in full cognizance of its delicate taste and evocative aura, seldom leads to drunkenness, and yet more seldom to loutish behavior. The drink problem that we witness in British cities stems from our inability to pay Bacchus his due. Thanks to cultural impoverishment, young people no longer have a repertoire of songs, poems, arguments or ideas with which to entertain one another in their cups. They drink to fill the moral vacuum generated by their culture, and while we are familiar with the adverse effect of drink on an empty stomach, we are now witnessing the far worse effect of drink on an empty mind.
ROGER SCRUTON
I Drink Therefore I Am
There's truth in wine, and there may be some in gin and muddy beer; but whether it's truth worth my knowing, is another question.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
When you're new to wine drinking, the special wine seems esoteric, fetishistic, even faintly ridiculous. Simply put, you don't get it, like someone who doesn't follow sports listening to devoted fans rhapsodizing over a memorable game.
MATT KRAMER
"That Special Wine", Wine Spectator, April 30, 2017
Wine is like a living breathing thing. Like artwork. If you don't store it properly ... things happen to it.
SUSAN MCGREGOR
"Exclusive: Inside RoboVault, Storage for the Rich & Famous", CBS Miami, February 5, 2016
This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Life of Samuel Johnson
I get refill number three or four and the wine is making my bones loose and it's giving my hair a red sheen and my breasts are blooming and my eyes feel sultry and wise and the dress is water.
AIMEE BENDER
Willful Creatures
In wine, there's truth.
PLINY THE ELDER
Natural History
The pleasure in any wine is subjective: we each bring something to what is there in the glass and interpret the result differently.
THOM ELKJER
Adventures in Wine
It's not sipping wine. It's a mourning wine. You drain it. Like this.
NEIL GAIMAN
Anansi Boys
They are not long, the days of wine and roses. Out of a misty dream, our path emerges for a while, then closes, within a dream.
ERNEST DOWSON
The Poems and Prose of Ernest Dowson
The best way to learn about wine is to uncork a few bottles and start sampling.
HARVEY STEIMAN
Wine Spectator's
One of the things I've found in my preliminary research is that people are more negatively sensitive to the knowledge that a wine is cheap than they are positively sensitive to the knowledge that a wine is expensive. If I serve you a wine and tell you that it costs $4, you'll have a much more negative experience of the wine. It really biases you against the wine even more strongly than it biases you towards the wine when you know it costs $100.
ROBIN GOLDSTEIN
"Price is Right? Drinking Premium Wine is Image Therapy--If We Know It's Pricey", California Magazine, May 28, 2016
The god of wine is a fascinating and frightful image of the cosmic interplay of life and death which began after the first catastrophe. Dionysus shows the world the two faces of a truth which makes one insane.... He brings death and resurrection all at once because he himself has tasted the intensity of life as well as death.
PHOTINA RECH
Wine and Bread
None who has known the charity of wine,
Its pity, the cool logic of its spell
Will waver in his loyalty, or dwell
In any heaven where the grape lacks a shrine.
DONALD EVANS
"Farewell to Wine"
Wine lovers all speak of their First Time, a quasi-spiritual moment of awakening to wine's wonderment. After that, it's a life sentence. I've seen it happen to even the most confirmed beer sluggers.
JENNIFER ROSEN
introduction, The Cork Jester's Guide to Wine
Thus, while I quaff the genial wine,
I live mid transports quite divine.
ANACREON
Ode XXVII, Odes
Now let you and me buy wine today!
Why say we have not the price?
My horse spotted with five flowers,
My fur-coat worth a thousand pieces of gold,
These I will take out, and call my boy
To barter them for sweet wine.
And with you twain, let me forget
The sorrow of ten thousand ages!
LI BAI
"An Exhortation"
To diners, wine pricing in restaurants seems less like money management and more like cash extraction.
MARK OLDMAN
"Why a $15 bottle of wine can get a 400 per cent markup in a restaurant", Stuff, March 10, 2017
Go on, have a glass of wine with dinner. What is wine, anyway? Pure grapes. A glass of wine is much better for you than a Coke.
JACK LALANNE
"30 Inspirational health quotes by fitness guru Jack LaLanne", Examiner, May 18, 2013
I can't make wine simple. But I can make it fun and beautiful, instead of esoteric and intimidating. The minute you realize it's OK to stumble along like the rest of us, asking questions and paying attention to your own reactions, then you'll begin what I hope will be a lifelong love affair with wine.
JENNIFER ROSEN
introduction, The Cork Jester's Guide to Wine