Wine and Age

“Wine improves with age. The older I get, the better I like it.” — Anonymous

“A man not old, but mellow, like good wine.” — Stephen Phillips, Ulysses, III. ii

“What though youth gave love and roses,
Age still leaves us friends and wine.” — Thomas Moore, National Airs, Spring and Autumn

“Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things — old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.” — Francis Bacon,  Apothegms

 

Wine and Crisis/Worry/Sadness

“Gentlemen, in the little moment that remains to us between the crisis and the catastrophe, we may as well drink a glass of Champagne.” — Paul Claudel, French poet

“Give me wine to wash me clean of the weather-stains of cares.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It’s not sipping wine. It’s a mourning wine. You drain it. Like this.” — Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“Wine! Because these problems aren’t going to forget themselves!” — unknown

Wine and Culture

“The peoples of the Mediterranean began to emerge from barbarism when they learnt to cultivate the olive and the vine.” — Thucydides, Greek Historian, 5th century BCE.

Wine and Death

“I intend to die in a tavern; let the wine be placed near my dying mouth, so that when the choirs of angels come, they may say, ‘God be merciful to this drinker!'” — Walter Mapes

“His element is so fine
Being sharpened by his death,
To drink from the wine-breath
While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.” — W.B.Yeats, All Souls’ Night

Wine and Dreams/Sleep

“If we sip the wine, we find dreams coming upon us out of the imminent night.” — D.H. Lawrence

“Wine makes all things possible.” — George R.R. Martin, The Mystery Knight

“To happy convents, bosomed deep in vines,
Where slumber abbots, purple as their wines.”  — Alexander Pope 

Wine and Drinking/Drunkeness

“One should always be drunk. That’s all that matters…But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk.” — Charles Baudelaire

“The wine — it made her limbs loose and liquid, made her feel that a hummingbird had taken the place of her heart.” — Jodi Picoult, Plain Truth

“I made a mental note to watch which bottle became empty soonest, sometimes a more telling evaluation system than any other.” — Gerald Asher, On Wine

“I hover over the expensive Scotch and then the Armagnac, but finally settle on a glass of rich red claret. I put it near my nose and nearly pass out. It smells of old houses and aged wood and dark secrets, but also of hard, hot sunshine through ancient shutters and long, wicked afternoons in a four-poster bed. It’s not a wine, it’s a life, right there in the glass.” — Nick Harkaway, The Gone-Away World

“He who aspires to be a serious wine drinker must drink claret.” — Samuel Johnson

“The wine urges me on, the bewitching wine, which sets even a wise man to singing and to laughing gently and rouses him up to dance and brings forth words which were better unspoken.” — Homer, The Odyssey, book XIV

[at his first sip of champagne] “Come quickly! I am tasting stars!” — Dom Perignon

Hardly did it appear, than from my mouth it passed into my heart.” — Abbe de Challieu, upon first tasting Champagne.

“No nation is drunken where wine is cheap, and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage.” — Thomas Jefferson

“Come boy, and pour for me a cup
Of old Falernian. Fill it up
With wine, strong, sparkling, bright, and clear;
Our host decrees no water here.
Let dullards drink the Nymph’s pale brew,
The sluggish thin their blood with dew.
For such pale stuff we have no use;
For us the purple grape’s rich juice.
Begone, ye chilling water sprite;
Here burning Bacchus rules tonight!” — Catullus

“Bessie Braddock, a well-known socialist in England, attended a dinner party at which she was seated next to Winston Churchill who had had quite a bit to drink. She said to him, ‘Winston, you are drunk!’ He replied, ‘Madame, I may be drunk, but you are ugly, and tomorrow I will be sober.'” — William Churchill

“All my favorite establishments were either overly crowded or pathetically empty. People either sipped fine vintages in celebration or gulped intoxicants of who cares what kind, drowning themselves in a lack of moderation, raising a glass to lower inhibitions, imbibing spirits to raise their own. ” — Monique Truong, The Book of Salt

“Upon the first goblet he read this inscription, monkey wine; upon the second, lion wine; upon the third, sheep wine; upon the fourth, swine wine. These four inscriptions expressed the four descending degrees of drunkenness: the first, that which enlivens; the second, that which irritates; the third, that which stupefies; finally the last, that which brutalizes.” — Victor Hugo, Les Misérables 

“Wine is the drink of the gods, milk the drink of babies, tea the drink of women, and water the drink of beasts.” — John Stuart Blackie

“If all be true that I do think,
There are five reasons we should drink:
Good wine –a friend–or being dry–
Or lest we should be by and by–
Or any other reason why.” — Henry Aldrich, Five Reasons for Drinking

“Go fetch to me a pint o’ wine,
An’ fill it in a silver tassie.” — Robert Burns, ‘Go Fetch to me a Pint o’ Wine’

“Pour out the wine without restraint or stay,
Pour not by cups, but by the bellyful,
Pour out to all that wull.” — Edmund Spenser, Epithalamion

Wine and Food

“After-dinner talk
Across the walnuts and the wine.” — Alfred Lord Tennyson,  ‘The Miller’s Daughter’

“She lived frugally, but her meals were the only things on which she deliberately spent her money. She never compromised on the quality of her groceries, and drank only good-quality wines.” — Haruki Murakami, IQ84

“And we meet, with champagne and a chicken, at last.” — Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, The Lover

“A [restaurant] wine list is praised and given awards for reasons that have little to do with its real purpose, as if it existed only to be admired passively, like a stamp collection. A wine list is good only when it functions well in tandem with a menu.” — Gerald Asher

“Drinking good wine with good food in good company is one of life’s most civilized pleasures.”– Michael Broadbent

“If food is the body of good living, wine is its soul.” — Clifton Fadiman

“I cook with wine; sometimes I even add it to the food.” — W. C. Fields

“in the abstract art of cooking,
ingredients trump appliances,
passion supersedes expertise,
creativity triumphs over technique,
spontaneity inspires invention,
and wine makes even the worst culinary disaster taste delicious.” — Bob Blumer

“Wine … the intellectual part of the meal.” — Alexandre Dumas, 1873

“Wine makes every meal an occasion, every table more elegant, every day more civilized.” — André Simon

Wine and Friendship

“What though youth gave love and roses age still leaves us friends and wine.” — Thomas Moore

“A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover.” — Clifton Fadiman

“From wine what sudden friendship springs!” — John Gay, The Squire and His Cur

“I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man’s milk and restorative cordial.” – Thomas Jefferson

Wine and the Future

“Nothing makes the future look so rosy as to contemplate it through a glass of Chambertin.” — Napoleon Bonaparte

Wine and Happiness

“Wine cheers the sad, revives the old, inspires the young, makes weariness forget his toil.” — Lord Byron

“There are thousands of wines that can take over our minds. Don’t think all ecstasies are the same!” — Rumi

“Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, sermons and soda water the day after.”– Lord Byron

“We may lay in a stock of pleasures as we would lay in a stock of wine, but if we defer tasting them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.” — Charles Caleb Colton

“Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection, and it offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing.” — Ernest Hemingway

“Clearly, the pleasures wines afford are transitory, but so are those of the ballet or of a musical performance. Wine is inspiring and adds greatly to the joy of living.” — Napoleon Bonaparte

“Wine rejoices the heart of man and joy is the mother of all virtues.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“There is nothing like wine for conjuring up feelings of contentment and goodwill. It is less of a drink than an experience, an evocation, a spirit. It produces sensations that defy description.” — Thomas Conklin, Wine: A Primer

“Wine brings to light the hidden secrets of the soul, gives being to our hopes, bids the coward flight, drives dull care away, and teaches new means for the accomplishment of our wishes.” — Horace

“And wine can of their wits the wise beguile, make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.” — Alexander Pope

 Wine and Health

“Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy.” — Alexander Fleming, the Scottish bacteriologist credited with discovering Penicillin in 1928.

“I have enjoyed great health at a great age because everyday since I can remember, I have consumed a bottle of wine except when I have not felt well. Then I have consumed two bottles.” — Bishop of Seville

“Wine is the most healthful and most hygienic of beverages.” — Louis Pasteur

“If your arteries are good, eat more ice cream. If they are bad, drink more red wine. Proceed thusly.” — Sandra Byrd, Bon Appetit

Wine Humor

“I like best the wine drunk at the cost of others.” — Diogenes the Cynic

“I wouldn’t have minded school if they taught you important things like how to have good sex and what brand of wine is the best … But for some reason they were hell bent on teaching me algebra.” — Ben Mitchell

“I am not sure I trust you.”
“You can trust me with your life, My King.”
“But not with my wine, obviously. Give it back.”
— Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia 

“I serve your Beaune to my friends, but your Volnay I keep for myself.” — Voltaire

“I should say upfront that I have never been in a cellar in my life. In fact, I can see no reason why anyone should ever go into a cellar unless there is wine involved.” — Rachel Hawkins, Hex Hall

“The worst gift I was given is when I got out of rehab that Christmas; a bottle of wine. It was delicious.” — Craig Ferguson

“What wine goes with Captain Crunch?”– George Carlin

“In the order named, these are the hardest to control: Wine, Women, and Song.” — Franklin P. Adams

“Sir, I did not count your glasses of wine, why should you number up my cups of tea?” — Samuel Johnson

Before leaving home to serve a one year jail sentence, a “white collar” criminal was quoted as saying, “I’m not worried about the reds; they’ll keep OK. But I am worried about the whites.” — Anonymous.

“I was in love with a beautiful blonde once. She drove me to drink; that’s the one thing I’m indebted to her for.” — W. C. Fields in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break

“If this was the best wine that Jim and Nora could afford or, worse, if this was their idea of a good wine – well, sadly, then they were better off dead.” — Dean Koontz, Breathless

“I am certain that the good Lord never intended grapes to be made into grape jelly.” — Fiorello La Guardia, former mayor of New York City

“I can certainly see that you know your wine. Most of the guests who stay here wouldn’t know the difference between Bordeaux and Claret.” — John Cleese (as Basil Fawlty), Fawlty Towers

“And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine,
‘I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine.'” — G.K. Chesterton, Wine and Water

Wine and Kisses

“it’s a smile, it’s a kiss, it’s a sip of wine … it’s summertime!”
―Kenny Chesney, “Summertime”

Wine and Life

“Life is too short to drink bad wine.” — Anonymous

A man, fallen on hard times, sold his art collection but kept his wine cellar. When asked why he did not sell his wine, he said, “A man can live without art, but not without culture.” — Anonymous

“Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance.” — Benjamin Franklin

“As we hypnotically watch the steadily diminishing reserve of sand in life’s hourglass, the instincts of a miser surface. Life is now savored, sipped as with a fine 19th Century French wine.” — Joe L. Wheeler

“Wine,  the mirror of the mind.” — Petronius, Roman writer

“In vino veritas.” — Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis

“Accept what life offers you and try to drink from every cup. All wines should be tasted; some should only be sipped, but with others, drink the whole bottle.”
― Paulo Coelho, Brida

“Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.” — Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“Clearly, the pleasures wines afford are transitory — but so are those of the ballet, or of a musical performance. Wine is inspiring and adds greatly to the joy of living.” –Napoleon Bonaparte

… the odour of Burgundy, and the smell of French sauces, and the sight of clean napkins and long loaves, knocked as a very welcome visitor at the door of our inner man.”– Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“My only regret in life is that I did not drink more Champagne.” — John Maynard Keynes

 Wine and Literature

“High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water.” — Mark Twain

“Wine is bottled poetry.” — Robert Louis Stevenson

Wine and Love

“Wine gives us liberty, love takes it away.
Wine makes us princes, love makes us beggars.” — Wycherly, The Country Life

“I love everything that is old; old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.” — Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer

“Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse — and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness —
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.” — Omar Khayyám

“Wine enters through the mouth,
Love, the eyes.
I raise the glass to my mouth,
I look at you,
I sigh.” — W.B. Yeats

“The first kiss and the first glass of wine are the best.” — Marty Rubin

“his lips drink water
but his heart drinks wine” — e.e. cummings

“Bring water, bring wine, boy! Bring flowering garlands to me! Yes, bring them, so that I may try a bout with love.” — Anacreon

Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup
And I’ll not look for wine.” — Ben Jonson, The Forest “To Celia”

Wine Making

“The two professions are almost the same. Each depends on source material and takes a lot of time to perfect. The big difference is that today’s winemakers still worry about quality.” — Francis Ford Coppola

“[Making wine] is like having children; you love them all, but boy, are they different.” –Bunny Finkelstein, Judd’s Hill Winery

“It takes a lot of beer to make good wine.” — Lou Preston, Preston Vineyards

“Making good wine is a skill; making fine wine is an art.” — Robert Mondavi

“Wine is a living liquid containing no preservatives. Its life cycle comprises youth, maturity, old age, and death. When not treated with reasonable respect it will sicken and die.” —  Julia Child

Wine Memories

“Before I was born my mother was in great agony of spirit and in a tragic situation. She could take no food except iced oysters and champagne. If people ask me when I began to dance, I reply ‘In my mother’s womb, probably as a result of the oysters and Champagne.’” — Isadora Duncan

“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.” — Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

When asked whether he ever confused a Bordeaux with a Burgundy in a blind tasting, British wine legend Harry Waugh replied: “Not since lunch.” — Harry Waugh

“Writing in my sixty-fourth year, I can truthfully say that since I reached the age of discretion I have consistently drunk more than most people would say is good for me. Nor did I regret it. Wine has been for me a firm friend and a wise counselor. Often … wine has shown me matters in their true perspective, and has, as though by the touch of a magic wand, reduced great disasters to small inconveniences. Wine has lit up for me the pages of literature and revealed in life romance lurking in the commonplace. Wine has made me bold but not foolish; has induced me to say silly things but not to do them.” — Duff Cooper, Old Men Forget

“I rejoiced in the Burgundy. It seemed a reminder that the world was an older and better place than Rex knew, that mankind in its long passion had learned another wisdom than his. By chance I met this same wine again, lunching with my wine merchant in St James’s Street in the first Autumn of the war; it had softened and faded in the intervening years, but it still spoke in the pure, authentic accent of its prime, the same words of hope.” –Evelyn Waugh

Wine and Men

“Who does not love wine, women, and song
Remains a fool his whole life long.” — Johann Heinrich Voss 

“Beer is made by men, wine by God!” — Martin Luther

“This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.” — Samuel Johnson

“Men are like wine – some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age.” — Pope John XXIII

“One should write not unskillfully in the running hand, be able to sing in a pleasing voice, and keep good time to music; and, lastly, a man should not refuse a little wine when it is pressed upon him.” — Yoshida Kenko, Essays in Idleness, c. 1340

“I like my coffee black, my beer from Germany, wine from Burgundy, the darker, the better. I like my heroes complicated and brooding, James Dean in oiled leather, leaning on a motorcycle. You know the color.” — Barbara Crooker, “Ode to Chocolate”

“Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say it makes him more pleasing to others.” — Samuel Johnson

“Most bad,” the host concluded. “If you ask me, something sinister lurks in men who avoid wine, games, the company of lovely women, and dinnertime conversation. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly detest everyone around them.” — Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Wine turns the wise man into a fool and the fool into a wise man. El vino convierte al sabio en necio, y al necio en sabio.” — Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“A man may surely be allowed to take a glass of wine by his own fireside.” — Richard Brinsley Sheridan

“Wine is a peep-hole on a man.” — Alcaeus 

Wine and Pain

If reassurances could dull pain, nobody would ever go to the trouble of pressing grapes.” — Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora

Wine and Proverbs and Other Texts

“Wine and wenches empty men’s purses.” — English Proverb

“It is well to remember that there are five reasons for drinking: the arrival of a friend; one’s present or future thirst; the excellence of the wine; or any other reason.” — Latin saying

“Burgundy for kings, champagne for duchesses, claret for gentlemen.” — Anon French Proverb

“In victory, you deserve champagne; in defeat, you need it.” — unknown

“For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red.” — Psalms 75:8

“Great wine works wonders and is itself one.” — Edward Steinbert, Making of Great Wine

“Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake.” — Timothy, 5:23

“Wine that maketh glad the heart of man.” — Psalms, 104:15

“Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.” — Proverbs, 31:6 – 7

“Forsake not an old friend; for the new is not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine; when it is old, thou shalt drink it with pleasure.” —  Ecclesiasticus, 9:10

“Like the best wine . . . that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak.” — The Song of Solomon, 7:9

“Neither do men put new wine into old bottles.” — Matthew, 9:17

“Thou hast showed thy people hard things: Thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment.” — Psalms, 60:3

“Up to the age of forty eating is beneficial. After forty, drinking.” — The Talmud

“Good wine ruins the purse; bad wine ruins the stomach.” — Spanish saying

“The best use of bad wine is to drive away poor relations.” — French proverb

“Drink wine, and you will sleep well. Sleep, and you will not sin. Avoid sin, and you will be saved. Ergo, drink wine and be saved.” — Medieval German saying

“Wine … cheereth God and man.” Judges, 9:13

Wine and Relationships

“Compromises are for relationships, not wine.” — Sir Robert Scott Caywood

“For at the end of the day, what matters is never the wine, it’s always the moment; it’s always the people.” — Olivier Magny, Into Wine: An Invitation to Pleasure

 Wine and Religion/Gods

“Wine is like the incarnation–it is both divine and human” — Paul Tillich

“How much more of the mosque, of prayer and fasting?
Better go drunk and begging round the taverns.
Khayyam, drink wine, for soon this clay of yours
Will make a cup, bowl, one day a jar.
When once you hear the roses are in bloom,
Then is the time, my love, to pour the wine;
Houris and palaces and Heaven and Hell–
These are but fairy-tales, forget them all.” — Omar Khayyám

“If Bacchus ever had a color he could claim for his own, it should surely be the shade of tannin on drunken lips, of John Keat’s ‘purple-stained mouth’, or perhaps even of Homer’s dangerously wine-dark sea.” — Victoria Finlay

“A little saint best fits a little shrine,
A little prop best fits a little vine,
As my small cruse best fits my little wine.”  — Robert Herrick, ‘A Ternary of Littles’

“Mankind . . . possesses two supreme blessings. First of these is the goddess Demeter, or Earth whichever name you choose to call her by. It was she who gave to man his nourishment of grain. But after her there came the son of Semele, who matched her present by inventing liquid wine as his gift to man. For filled with that good gift, suffering mankind forgets its grief; from it comes sleep; with it oblivion of the troubles of the day. There is no other medicine for misery.” — Euripides, The Bacchae 

“If God forbade drinking, would He have made wine so good?” — Cardinal Richeleu

Wine and Shakespeare

“Good wine needs no bush.” — William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Epilogue

“I pray you, do not fall in love with me, for I am falser than vows made in wine.” — William Shakespeare, As You Like It, III.v.

“The wine-cup is the little silver well,
Where truth, if truth there be, doth dwell.” — William Shakespeare

“Good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used.” — William Shakespeare, Othello, II. iii. 

“A man cannot make him laugh–but that’s no marvel; he drinks no wine.” — William Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 2, IV.2

Wine Tasting

“When I find someone I respect writing about an edgy, nervous wine that dithered in the glass, I cringe. When I hear someone I don’t respect talking about an austere, unforgiving wine, I turn a bit austere and unforgiving myself. When I come across stuff like that and remember about the figs and bananas, I want to snigger uneasily. You can call a wine red, and dry, and strong, and pleasant. After that, watch out. ” — Kingsley Amis, Everyday Drinking

“Here’s to the corkscrew — a useful key to unlock the storehouse of wit, the treasury of laughter, the front door of fellowship, and the gate of pleasant folly.” — W.E.P. French

“When it comes to wine, I tell people to throw away the vintage charts and invest in a corkscrew. The best way to learn about wine is the drinking.” — Alexis Lichine

“My dear girl, there are some things that are just not done, such as drinking Dom Perignon ‘53 above the temperature of 38° Fahrenheit.” — James Bond in Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger

Hardly did it appear, than from my mouth it passed into my heart.” — Abbe de Challieu, 1715, upon first tasting Champagne.

On drinking the wines of Bordeaux: “The French drink them young, so a Socialist government won’t take them. The English drink them old, so they can show their friends cobwebs and dusty bottles. The American drink them exactly when they are ready, because they don’t know any better.” — Anonymous

“Presenting the cork is wine nonsense, a ritual invented by captains and sommeliers. The wine snob doesn’t resent ritual. There is infinite ritual in the etiquette of serving wine. But most of it at least hints at style or purpose. Placing an unsightly cork on the tablecloth hints at absurdity.” — The Official Guide to Wine Snobbery, Leonard S. Bernstein

“No wine can be regarded as unimportant, my friend, since the marriage at Cana.” — Graham Greene, Monsignor Quixote

“White wine is like electricity. Red wine looks and tastes like a liquified beefsteak.” — James Joyce

“Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host’s Canary wine?” — John Keats “Lines on the Mermaid Tavern”

“The wine seems to be very closed-in and seems to have entered a dumb stage. Sort of a Marcel Meursault.” — Paul S. Winalski

“The wines that one best remembers are not necessarily the finest that one has ever tasted, and the highest quality may fail to delight so much as some far more humble beverage drunk in more favorable surroundings.” — H. Warner Allen

Wine and War

“My objection to war was not that I had to kill somebody or be killed senselessly, that hardly mattered. What I objected to was to be denied the right to sit in a small room and starve and drink cheap wine and go crazy in my own way and at my own leisure.” –Charles Bukowski, South of No North

Wine and Weather

“There is not the hundredth part of the wine consumed in this kingdom that there ought to be. Our foggy climate wants help.” — Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Wine and Women

“Fill ev’ry glass, for wine inspires us,
And fires us
With courage, love and joy.
Women and wine should life employ.
Is there ought else on earth desirous?” — John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera, II. i.

I may not here omit those two main plagues and common dotages of human kind, wine and women, which have infatuated and besotted myriads of people; they go commonly together. — Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy 

Wine and Wisdom

“Wine can be a better teacher than ink, and banter is often better than books.” Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles

“Aw I don’t wanta go to no such thing, I just wanta drink in alleys.’…
But you’ll miss all that, just for some old wine.’
There’s wisdom in wine, goddam it!’ I yelled. ‘Have a shot!” — Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums 

“When men drink, then they are rich and successful and win lawsuits and are happy and help their friends. Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.” — Aristophanes, The Knights

“In wine, there’s truth.” –Pliny the Elder, Natural History

“There is truth in wine, but you never see it listed in the ingredients on the label”― Josh Stern

“A man will be eloquent if you give him good wine.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Man

“For when the wine is in, the wit is out.” — Thomas Becon, Catechism

“It is better to hide ignorance, but it is hard to do this when we relax over wine.” — Heraclitus, On the Universe

Wine and the World

“Wine is the most civilized thing in the world.” — Ernest Hemingway

“To take wine into our mouths is to savor a droplet of the river of human history.” — Clifton Fadiman

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