quotations about wine
A river town. The autumn rain has stopped.
Our wine is gone. So, farewell!
LI BAI
"At a River Town"
Wine is a passport to the world.
THOM ELKJER
Adventures in Wine
Wine is a great investment ... if you don't drink it.
VICKI DENIG
"Wine is a great investment ... if you don't drink it", Vine Pair, March 6, 2017
When full of wine we ask for water.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Wine is better for brains than math, scientist claims.
JERRIANN SULLIVAN
"Rejoice! Science Says Drinking Wine Is Good For Your Brain", Scary Mommy, April 11, 2017
We want to be the person who knows something about wine ... We are drinking for the experience and adventure of discovering something new.
MORGAN HARRIS
"Why millennials can't get enough wine", Fox News, April 6, 2017
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
Wine is a mixture of all things: a complex food; a social, religious, festive, and symbolic beverage; a materia medica; a lot of fun; a deity in liquid form "that will make the blind to see and the lame walk"; a fiery water; a delightful poison; a work of art; a work of nature; in sum, a living thing. A connoisseur will tell you it has charm, character, finesse, or breed, and he will call it honest, mature, disloyal, fat, or flabby. In fact, a great bottle of wine is thought to be so alive and individual that a true wine lover will consider it to be, in sincere humility, a better person than he is.
BOB MCKAY
"How not to let a shelf full of Chablis, Claret and Beaujolais intimidate you", Cincinnati Magazine, February 1977
Don't mix wine and women.
CESARE PAVESE
The Beach
Wine contains all four basic tastes. The sweet taste is provided by the alchohol and, where present, its sugars; sour taste comes from the free organic acids; the salt taste from the salts; the bitter taste from the wine's phenolic components, generally called tannins. In tasting wine, these four tastes are not perceived at the same time, they become apparent one after the other.
EMILE PEYNAUD
Knowing and Making Wine
You may happen on a good bottle, but chances are you will not. For that, you need a store run by passionate devotees who do much of the advance work for you. A good wine shop or online merchant with a point of view, like a great butcher or baker, will have performed a rigorous selection process before making its wares available to consumers. Knowing that you are in a good wine shop can sharpen your decision-making down to issues of taste and occasion rather than quality.
ERIC ASIMOV
"Want to Pick Better Bottles? Repeat After Me: Wine Is Food", New York Times, March 6, 2017
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
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
I drink when I have occasion, and sometimes when I have no occasion.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
Wine is bottled poetry.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
The Silverado Squatters
This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Life of Samuel Johnson
One should always be drunk. That's all that matters.... But with what? With wine, poetry, or virtue as you choose. But get drunk.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"Get Drunk"
Choosing a wine is a "mood thing," which can vary depending upon the food with which it's accompanied, or by something as seemingly unexceptional as the weather. On a steamy day ... a pinot grigio; on a wintry day, a cabernet sauvignon.
DENISE MAROTTA LOPES
"Inspired Bites: Restaurant is both popular eatery and wine shop", Cecil Daily, February 6, 2016
Many people seek an easy formula for choosing better wines. I'm often asked if I can suggest a book, or a class, or a particular wine magazine. But trying to master the vast array of wine producers from almost all corners of the earth is a long, though fascinating, slog. I'm still trudging along that endless route myself. Fortunately, there is a simpler solution that does not require poring over tomes that daunt you with complexity, or pamphlets that mislead you by promising easy expertise. All you have to do is remember three words: Wine is food.
ERIC ASIMOV
"Want to Pick Better Bottles? Repeat After Me: Wine Is Food", New York Times, March 6, 2017
One of the most insidious myths in American wine culture is that a wine is good if you like it. Liking a wine has nothing to do with whether it is good. Liking a wine has to do with liking that wine, period. Wine requires two assessments: one subjective, the other objective. In this it is like literature. You may not like reading Shakespeare but agree that Shakespeare was a great writer nonetheless.
KAREN MACNEIL
The Wine Bible