quotations about wine
Wine is a social beverage, best appreciated with friends and family. It makes dinner more civilized. It slows us down a little, gives us something special to add to the moment.
HARVEY STEIMAN
Wine Spectator's
Wine is bottled poetry.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
The Silverado Squatters
Do you dare to accuse wine of clouding the reason? Quote me more marvelous effects than those of wine. Look! when a man drinks, he is rich, everything he touches succeeds, he gains lawsuits, is happy and helps his friends. Come, bring hither quick a flagon of wine, that I may soak my brain and get an ingenious idea.
ARISTOPHANES
The Knights
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
Pure wine is fit for a royal table, while impure at any price proclaims an uneducated palate.
JAMES LEMOINE DENMAN
Pure Wine and How to Know It
I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.
W. C. FIELDS
attributed, Chicken Soup for the Wine Lover's Soul
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
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
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
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
When full of wine we ask for water.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Wine is perhaps the closest thing the planet has to an elixir of life.
THOM ELKJER
Adventures in Wine
We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana as of a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy. The miracle in question was only performed to hasten the operation, under circumstances of present necessity, which required it.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
letter to Abbé Morellet, 1779
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
A $300 bottle of wine is a more affordable status marker than a sports car or designer handbag.
W. BLAKE GRAY
"Price is Right? Drinking Premium Wine is Image Therapy--If We Know It's Pricey", California Magazine, May 28, 2016
I love to discover a $10 bottle of wine, a $15 bottle of wine, rather than the usual $70, $80 bottle of wine. Everybody likes to drink wine, so it's very important to have values.
PIERO SELVAGGIO
"The Once and Future Piero Selvaggio", Wine Spectator, April 30, 2017
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
So wines at the time of the Bible were big, round, juicy, austere wines, red or amber in color. That austerity was often cut with water. It was basically required in the ancient world to dilute your wine with a little bit of water to round it out, and you were seen as a barbarian if you didn't do so.
KEITH BEAVERS
"What wine would Jesus drink?", Vinepair, April 11, 2017
A river town. The autumn rain has stopped.
Our wine is gone. So, farewell!
LI BAI
"At a River Town"
Wine and cheese are ageless companions, like aspirin and aches, or June and moon, or good people and noble ventures.
M. F. K. FISHER
introduction, Vin et Fromage