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A [back to top]

 

Adams, Franklin P. (1881-1960) | American columnist, author of "The Conning Tower"

 

• In the order named, these are the hardest to control: Wine, Women, and Song.

 

Alcaeus

 

• Wine is a peep-hole on a man.

 

Aldrich, Henry | (1647-1710) Dean of Christ Church, Oxford

 

• 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.

Allen, Harvey

 

• Religions change; beer and wine remain.

 

Apocrypha

 

• 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)

 

Aristophanes (Greek Comic Playwrite)

 

• 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.

 

Anonymous

 

• Drink wine in winter for cold, and in summer for heat.

 

• I cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

 

• Life is too short to drink bad wine.

 

• Wine improves with age. The older I get, the better I like it.

 

• How is Champagne made? By sheer genius, sir, sheer genius!

 

• Description of a corkscrew:.. the wine lover's best friend and the rarest of tools.

 

Aquinas, St. Thomas

• Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of good wine.

 

Asher, Gerald | Wine Expert, Adviser and Writer

• I often wonder whether those who so vehemently proscribe certain wine and food combinations do so from unhappy experience or from an untested acceptance of "rules..." [J]ust a few years ago .... we raised our glasses [unknowingly filled with 1923 Rayne-Vigneau Sauternes and] there was a delighted murmur from each of us at the quite unexpected taste sensation produced by this dry-sweet old wine---rich in flavors rather than sugars---in combination with  the delicate richness of the fish. What rule would have told me to drink fine old Sauternes with smoked salmon?

• I made a mental note to watch which bottle became empty soonest, sometimes a more telling evaluation system than any other.

• I know never to take a wine for granted. Drawing a cork is like attendance at a concert or at a play that one knows well, when there is all the uncertainty of no two performances ever being quite the same. That is why the French say, ‘There are no good wines, only good bottles.

Athenaeus | Greek Rhetorician and Grammarian

• On one occasion some one put a very little wine into a [glass], and said that it was sixteen years old. 'It is very small for its age,' said Gnathaena.

(The Deipnosophists)

 

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Baudelaire, Charles (1821-1867) | French Poet and Critic

• Within the bottle’s depths, the wine’s soul sang one night.

• Drink wine, drink poetry, drink virtue.

 

Bacon, Francis

 

• 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.

 

Barths, Roland

• Wine is a part of society because it provides a basis not only for a morality but also for an environment; it is an ornament in the slightest ceremonials of French daily life, from the snack to the feast, from the conversation at the local cafT to the speech at a formal dinner.

 

Becon, Thomas | (1512-1567) British Protestant Reformer

• For when the wine is in, the wit is out
  (Catechism, 375)

 

Benwell, William S.

• The soft extractive note of an aged cork being withdrawn has the true sound of a man opening his heart. (Journey to Wine in Victoria)

 

Berger, Dan | Wine Columnist

• I feel a genuine sadness about vertical tastings that has always left me feeling as if I needed a soul-cleansing afterwards.

(Quoted in The Billionaire's Vinegar)

Bespaloff, Alex | Wine Writer

• Never buy the cheapest wine in any category, as its taste may discourage you from going on. The glass, corks, cartons, and labor are about the same for any wine, as are the ocean freight and taxes for imported wines. Consequently, if you spend a little more, you are likely to get a better wine, because the other costs remain fixed. Cheap wine will always be too expensive.

 

Bible (King James)

 

• Thou hast showed thy people hard things: Thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment. (Psalms, 60:3)

• Wine that maketh glad the heart of man. (Psalms, 104:15)

 

• Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging; and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.  (Proverbs, 20:1)

 

• Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.
  (Proverbs, 31:6 - 7)

 

• 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. (The Proverbs, 31:6 - 7)

 

• And Noah began to be a husbandman, and he planted a vineyard. (Genesis 9:20)

 

Bierce, Ambrose

 

• Bacchus /n./ A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.  (The Devil's Dictionary)

 

• WINE, n.Fermented grape-juice known to the Women's Christian Union as "liquor," sometimes as "rum." Wine, madam, is God's next best gift to man.  (The Devil's Dictionary)

• Fill up, fill up, for wisdom cools
  When e'er we let the wine rest.
  Here's death to Prohibition's fools,
  And every kind of vine-pest! 

Holobom, Jamrach / (The Devil's Dictionary)

Bishop of Seville

 

• I have enjoyed great health at a great age because every day since I can remember I have consumed a bottle of wine except when I have not felt well. Then I have consumed two bottles.

 

 

Boorde, Andrew

 

• Wine ...moderately drunken it doth quicken a man's wits, It doth comfort the heart.  (Dyetary of Helth)

 

Bonaparte, Napoleon (1769-1821) | French Emperor

 

• In victory, you deserve champagne, in defeat, you need it.

 

• 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.

 

• I drink champagne when I win, to celebrate ... and I drink champagne when I lose to console myself.

 

• Nothing makes the future look so rosy as to contemplate it through a glass of Chambertin.

 

 

Bollinger, Lily

 

• I only drink champagne when I'm happy, and when I'm sad. Sometimes I drink it when I'm alone. When I have company, I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I am not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it - unless I'm thirsty.  

 

Brillat-Savarin, Jean-Anthelme

 

• Burgundy makes you think of silly things, Bordeaux makes you talk of them and Champagne makes you do them.

 

• A hard drinker, being at the table, was offered grapes for dessert. 'Thank you,' said he, pushing the dish away from him, 'but I am not in the habit of taking my wine in pills.'   (The Physiology of Taste)

 

• Your true amateur sips his wine; as he lingers over each separate mouthful, he obtains from each the sum total of pleasure which he would have experienced had he emptied his glass at a single draught.

 

Broadbent, Michael |   British wine critic, writer and auctioneer

 

• A sight of the label is worth 50 years experience.
  

 

• Food and wine. Decide which is the soloist, which the accompanist.

Buchwald, Art

 

• I like Champagne, because it always tastes as though my foot's asleep.

 

 

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Catullus | (84 BC – ca. 54 BC) Latin Poet

 

• Away with you, water, destruction of wine!

 

 

Caywood, Sir Robert Scott

 

• Compromises are for relationships, not wine.

 

 

Churchill, Winston S. 

• Remember gentlemen, it's not just France we are fighting for, it's Champagne!

 

Chesterton, G.K.  |  English Writer

 

• The wine they drink in paradise, they make in Haute Lorraine.

 

Claudel, Paul  |  (1868 – 1955) French Poet, Dramatist and Diplomat

 

• Gentlemen, in the little moment that remains to us between the crisis and the catastrophe, we may as well drink a glass of Champagne.

 

 

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Da Vinci, Leonardo (1452-1519) | Italian Artist

• The discovery of a good wine is increasingly better for mankind than the discovery of a new star.

Diamond, Sam | Character in the movie "Murder by Death" (1976), played by actor, Peter Falk.

• The last time that I trusted a dame was in Paris in 1940. She was going out to get a bottle of wine. Two hours later, the Germans marched into France.

 

 

Dickens, Charles

• ... Mr. Tulkinghorn sits at one of the open windows, enjoying a bottle of old port. Though a hard-grained man, close, dry, and silent, he can enjoy old wine with the best. He has a priceless bin of port in some artful cellar under the Fields, which is one of his many secrets. When he dines alone in chambers, as he has dined to-day, and has his bit of fish and his steak or chicken brought in from the coffee-house, he descends with a candle to the echoing regions below the deserted mansion, and, heralded by the remote reverberation of thundering doors, comes gravely back, encircled by an earthy atmosphere and carrying a bottle from which he pours a radiant nectar, two score and ten years old, that blushes in the glass to find itself so famous, and fills the whole room with the fragrance of southern grapes.

 

Dickinson, Emily | American Poet

 

• I tasted - careless - then –

I did not know the Wine Came once a World - Did you?
Oh, had you told me so -
This Thirst would blister - easier - now -

 

Dinesen, Karen Christenze (Pen Name: Isak [1885-1962]) | Danish Author

What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning, with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine?  (Seven Gothic Tales)

Diogenes | Greek Philosopher

 

• The vine bears three kinds of grapes: the first of pleasure, the second of intoxication, the third of disgust.

 

• What I like to drink most is wine that belongs to others.

 

 

Dumas Sr., Alexandre (1802-1870) | French Novelist

• Wine is the intellectual part of a meal, meats are merely the material part.

 

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Evans, Len | English-born Australian promoter, maker, judge, taster, teacher and drinker of wine.

 

• You have only so many bottles in your life, never drink a bad one.

 

 

Epicurus | Ancient Greek Philosopher

 

• Be moderate in order to taste the joys of life in abundance.

   

Entrekin, Lee

 

• A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine, except that on a day without sunshine you can still get drunk.

 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

• Give me wine to wash me clean of the weather-stains of care.

 

Euripides (480 BC – 406 BC) | The last of the three great tragedians of classical Athens

• Where there is no wine there is no love.

• The first is Demeter, the Goddess.
  She is the Earth -- or any name you wish to call her --
  and she sustains humanity with solid food.
  Next came Dionysus, the son of the virgin,
  bringing the counterpart to bread: wine
  and the blessings of life's flowing juices.
  His blood, the blood of the grape,
  lightens the burden of our mortal misery.
  Though himself a God, it is his blood we pour out
  to offer thanks to the Gods. And through him, we are blessed.

  (The Bacchae)

 

 

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Fadiman, Clifton | American Intellectual, Author, Radio & Television Personality

• If food is the body of good living, wine is its soul.

 

• To take wine into your mouth is to savor a droplet of the river of human history.

 

• [Wine is] poetry in a bottle.

• A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover.

 

 

Feynman, Richard P.  |  Nobel Prize Winning American Physicist

 

• There in wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation.

 

 

Fielding, Henry

 

• Wine is a turncoat; first a friend and then an enemy. 

 

Fields, W. C.

• I cook with wine; sometimes I even add it to the food.

 

• What contemptible scoundrel stole the cork from my lunch?

 

 

Fleming, Sir Alexander (1881-1955) | Scottish bacteriologist, discovered Penicillin in 1928.

• If penicillin can cure those that are ill, Spanish sherry can bring the dead back to life.

• Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy.

 

 

Franklin, Benjamin

 

• Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy.

 

• Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance.

 

• The discovery of a wine is of greater moment than the discovery of a constellation. The universe is too full of stars.

 

• In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria.

 

Freud, Sir Clement | English broadcaster, writer, politician and chef / Grandson of Sigmund Freud

Wine buffs write and talk as though the food and wine will be in your mouth at the same time, that one is there to be poured over the other.  This is bullshit.  Gustatory enjoyment comes from food and wine and cigars of your liking.  So far no one has said that a Monte Cristo is the only cigar to smoke after Armagnac, Romeo and Juliet after Calvados ... but the time may yet come.
(No-one Else Has Complained)

 

 

 G [back to top]

 

Galileo, Gallilei (1564-1642) | Italian Scientist and Mathematician

 

• Wine is sunlight, held together by water.

 

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832) | German Poet and Philosopher

• Wine rejoices the heart of man and joy is the mother of all virtues.

 

Goldsmith, Oliver

• I love everything that’s old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine. (She Stoops to Conquer)

 

Greene, Albert Gorton

 

• Fill every beaker up, my men, pour forth the cheering wine: there's life and strength in every drop, thanksgiving to the vine!

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Hafiz of Shriraz (1325-1388) | Persian Poet

• The only friends who are free from cares are the goblet of wine and a book. Give me wine...that I may for a time forget the cares of the world.
  

 

Haydn, Franz Joseph (1732 – 1809) | Austrian Composer

• The custom of saluting [i.e., embracing] ladies by their relatives and friends was introduced, it is said, by the early Romans, not out of respect originally, but to find by their breath whether they had been drinking wine, this being criminal for women to do, as it sometimes led to adultery.

 

Healy, Maurice

 

• The good talk that is inseparable from a wine dinner is even more important than the wines that are being served. Never bring up your better bottles if you are entertaining a man who cannot talk. Keep your treasures for a night when those few who are nearest to your heart can gather round your table, free from care, with latchkeys in their pockets and no last train to catch.

 

Hemingway, Ernest (American Novelist)

 

• Wine is the most civilized thing in the world.

 

• In Europe we thought of wine as something as healthy and normal as food and also a great giver of happiness and well being and delight. Drinking wine was not a snobbism nor a sign of sophistication nor a cult; it was as natural as eating and to me as necessary.

 

• I drank a bottle of wine for company. It was Chateau Margaux. It was pleasant to be drinking slowly and to be tasting the wine and to be drinking alone. A bottle of wine was good company.

(The Sun Also Rises)

• Wine … offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than possibly any other purely sensory thing which may be purchased.

 

Hergermann-Lindencrone, Lillie de

• Baron James Rothschild sent Rossini [composer of 'The Barber of Seville', 'William Tell', etc.] some splendid grapes from his hothouse. Rossini, in thanking him, wrote, "although your grapes are superb,

I don't like my wine in capsules." Rothschild read this as an invitation to send him some of his celebrated Chateau-Lafite, which he proceeded to do.

 

Heraclitus c. 540 - c. 480 B.C.

• It is better to hide ignorance, but it is hard to do this when we relax over wine.

 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

 

• Wine is a food.

 

Homer

• Whenever a man is tired, wine is a great restorer of strength. (The Iliad)

 

• 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. (The Odyssey)

 

Howell, James

• French wines may be said but to pickle meat in the stomach, but this is the wine that digests, and doth not only breed good blood, but it nutrifieth also, being a glutinous substantial liquor; of this wine, if of any other, may be verified that merry induction: That good wine makes good blood, good blood causeth good humors, good humors cause good thoughts, good thoughts bring forth good works, good works carry a man to heaven, ergo, good wine carrieth a man to heaven.

 

Hugo, Victor

 

• God made only water, but man made wine.

 

• 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. (Les Misérables [1862], Cosette)

Huxley,  Aldous

 

• It had the taste of an apple peeled with a steel knife.  (Sebastian Barnack assessing a Roederer 1916 champagne in Time Must Have a Stop)

  

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Coming Soon

 

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Jefferson, Thomas

 

• By making this wine vine known to the public, I have rendered my country as great a service as if I had enabled it to pay back the national debt.

 

• No nation is drunken where wine is cheap, and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage.

 

 

Johnson, Ben

 

• 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.

 

 

Johnson, Samuel 1709-1784 | English Essayist, Lexicographer, Biographer, Poet

 

• Claret is the liquor for boys, port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy. (From Life of Johnson by James Boswell)

 

• One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

 

• He who aspires to be a serious wine drinker must drink claret.

 

• This is one of the disadvantages of wine; it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

   

• Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.

 

Joyce, James

 

• What is better than to sit at the end of the day and drink wine with friends, or substitutes for friends!

 

 

K [back to top]

 

Keats, John | (1795 - 1821) English Romantic Poet

 

• Knowledge enormous makes a God of me.
  Names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions,
  Majesties, sovran voices, agonies,
  Creations and destroyings, all at once
  Pour into the wide hollows of my brain,
  And deify me, as if some blithe wine
  Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk,
  And so become immortal.
  (Poems; Hyperion: A Fragment, bk. III, l. 113)

 

Keynes, John Maynard

• My only regret in life is that I didn't drink enough Champagne.

 

King Edward VII  

• One not only drinks the wine, one smells it, observes it, tastes it, sips it and-one talks about it.

 

The Koran (Muslim  Holy Book)

 

• There is a devil in every berry of the grape.

 

Khayyam, Omar (1048-1122) | Persian Poet

• I wonder what the vintners buy one half so precious as the stuff they sell.

 

• The Grape that can with Logic absolute
  The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute:
  The sovereign Alchemist that in a trice
  Life's leaden metal into Gold transmute.

 

• Assist, almighty wine, for thou alone hast power,
  Assist while with just praise I thee adore.
  Thou art the world's great soul, that heavenly fire,
  Which dost our half-kinded mass inspire.
  A friend and a bottle is all my design;
  He has no room for treason that's top-full of wine. and
  I often wonder what the vintners buy
  One half so precious as the stuff they sell.

 

• Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape
  Than sadden after none, or bitter fruit.

 

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Lacy, Steve | American Jazz Saxophonist

 

• Jazz is like wine. When it is new, it is only for the experts, but when it gets older, everybody wants it.
  

Luther, Martin

 

• Beer is made by men, wine by God!

 

• He who loves not wine, women and song remains a fool his whole life long.

 

Lynch, Kermit |   American wine importer, author, and winemaker

 

• Blind tastings are to wine what strip poker is to love.

 

Lyons, Joseph | Australia's 10th Prime Minister

It sloweth age, it strengtheneth youth, it helpeth digestion, it abandoneth melancholie, it relisheth the heart, it lighteneth the mind, it quickenth the spirits, it keepeth and preserveth the head from whirling, the eyes from dazzling, the tongue from lisping, the mouth from snaffling, the teeth from chattering and the throat from rattling; it keepeth the stomach from wambling, the heart from swelling, the hands from shivering, the sinews from shrinking, the veins from crumbling, the bones from aching, and the marrow from soaking.

(Translated by Lyons from a 16th Century Manuscript)

 

 

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Maccius, Titus (190 BC)

 

• The great evil of wine is that it first seizes the feet, it is a crafty wrestler.

 

MacLean, Natalie (Wine Writer)

• While wine may be only a drink, it is also one of the most complex sensory pleasures we enjoy. It is as cerebral as it is sensual, and it requires a lifetime to appreciate it.

 

Mahler, Gustav

 

• A full cup of wine at the right time is worth more than all the kingdoms of this earth!  (Das Lied Von Der Erde)

 

Courts of Memory (by James McConkey)

• When the wine [made at her chateau] is in the golden period of effervescing, any sick child in the village ticketed by the doctor can be brought to the wine-presses and dipped in. If labeled 'tres malade,' he is dipped in twice.

 

McGovern, Dr. Patrick

 

• Fermented beverages have been preferred over water throughout the ages: they are safer, provide psychotropic effects, and are more nutritious. Some have even said alcohol was the primary agent for the development of Western civilization, since more healthy individuals (even if inebriated much of the time) lived longer and had greater reproductive success.  (From The Origin & Ancient History of Wine)

 

Michelangelo (1475-1564) | Italian Painter & Sculptor

• I feast on wine and bread, and feasts they are.
  

 

Mikes, George | Hungarian born British author

• I have often thought that the aim of port is to give you a good and durable hangover, so that during the next day you should be reminded of the splendid occasion the night before.
  

 

Millay, Edna St. Vincent

 

• I drank at every vine, the last was like the first. I came upon no wine so wonderful as thirst.

 

Milton, John | English poet, polemicist, and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England

• Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape
  Crush'd the sweet poison of misused wine.
  (Comus)

• When night
  Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons
  Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
  (Paradise Lost)

 

• Wine, one sip of this will bathe the drooping spirits in delight beyond the bliss of dreams. Be wise and taste.
                 

 

Moore, Thomas

 

• So life’s year begins and closes;
   Days though shortening still can shine;

What though youth gave love and roses, age still leaves us friends and wine.

 

Mondavi, Robert  (From his Autobiography, Harvests Of Joy)

                (1913 - 2008)   Inductee in the Vintner's Hall of Fame

 

• Wine to me is passion. It's family and friends. It's warmth of heart and generosity of spirit. Wine is art. It's culture. It's the essence of civilization and the art of living.

 

• Wine has been a part of civilized life for some seven thousand years. It is the only beverage that feeds the body, soul and spirit of man and at the same time stimulates the mind.

 

• Making good wine is a skill. Fine wine is an art.

 

Montague, Charles Edward

 

• Burgundy was the winiest wine, the central, essential, and typical wine, the soul and greatest common measure of all the kindly wines of the earth.

 

Mystic7

 

• I realized I had a drinking problem the day I found myself wishing there were colors of wine for every food, not just meat and fish.

 

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Nase, Joseph (Wine Director)

• Oak management must be secondary allowing the place and fruit to be center stage. Over-oaked wines are making a bad name for the industry.

 

Nash, Ogden

• Too much Chablis can make you whablis.

 

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Ovid

• Wine gives courage and makes men more apt for passion.

 

• When there is plenty of wine, sorrow and worry take wing.

The Art of Love

.......

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Pasteur, Louis

 

• Wine can be considered with good reason as the most healthful and the most hygienic of all beverages.

  

• The flavor of wine is like delicate poetry.

 

Peacock, Thomas Love (1785-1866) | English satirist and author

 

• Seamen three! what men be ye?
  Gotham's three Wise Men we be.
  Whither in your bowl so free?
  To rake the moon from out the sea.
  The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine,
  And our ballast is old wine.
  
  (Nightmare Abbey, Ch. 11, 'Three Men of Gotham')

 

Plato

 

• When a man drinks wine at dinner, he begins to be better pleased with himself.

  

• Wine fills the heart with courage.

 

Pope Pius XII Airen

 

• Wine in itself is an excellent thing.

 

Pope John XXIII | 261st Pope of the Catholic Church

 

• Men are like wine - some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age.

 

Parker, Dorothy

 

• Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

 

Perignon, Dom (About Champagne)

 

• Come quickly, I am drinking the stars!

 

Proverbs

 

English (Toast)

 

• May our love be like good wine, grow stronger as it grows older.

 

French

 

• Burgundy for Kings, Champagne for Duchesses, and claret for Gentlemen.

 

• The best use of bad wine is to drive away poor relations.

 

• In water one sees one's own face; But in wine, one beholds the heart of another.

 

German (Medieval)

 

• 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.

 

Latin

• 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.

 

Russian

 

• Drink a glass of wine after your soup and you steal a ruble from your doctor.

 

Spanish

• For a bad night, a mattress of wine.

 

• Good wine ruins the purse; bad wine ruins the stomach.

 

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Rabelais, Francois (1493-1553) | French Humorist

• I do not drink more than a sponge.

 

Richelieu, Cardinal

 

• If God forbade drinking, would he have made wine so good!

 

Rubinstein, Arthur (1886-1982) | Polish Pianist

 

• …stories about [the German composer Johannes] Brahms's rudeness and wit amused me in particular. For instance, I loved the one about how a great wine connoisseur invited the composer to dinner. 'This is the Brahms of my cellar,' he said to his guests, producing a dust-covered bottle and pouring some into the master's glass. Brahms looked first at the color of the wine, then sniffed its bouquet, finally took a sip, and put the glass down without saying a word. 'Don't you like it?' asked the host. 'Hmm,' Brahms muttered. 'Better bring your Beethoven!'

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Saintsbury, George [1845-1913]

• When [wines] were good they pleased my sense, cheered my spirits, improved my moral and intellectual powers, besides enabling me to confer the same benefits on other people. (Notes on a Cellar Book)

 

Scott, Sir Walter

• Good wine needs neither bush nor preface to make it welcome.

• And they drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd.

 

 

Shaw, George Bernard

 

• A mind of the caliber of mine cannot derive its nutrient from cows.

 

Shakespeare, William | English Poet and Playwright

 

• Good wine needs no bush.  (As You Like It, Epilogue)

 

• Give me a bowl of wine, In this I bury all unkindness. (Julius Caesar)

 

• Give me a bowl of wine: have not that alacrity of spirit, Nor cheer of mind, that I was wont to have. (Richard III).

 

• Wine is a good familiar creature if it be will used, exclaim no more against it.  (Othello)

 

• I am falser than vows made in wine. (As You Like It)

• The wine-cup is the little silver well,
                Where truth, if truth there be, doth dwell.

 

 Simon, André  (French Wine Writer, Merchant and Gourmand / 1877-1970)

 

• Wine makes every meal an occasion, every table more elegant, every day more civilized. (Commonsense of Wine)

 

• A man dies too young if he leaves any wine in his cellar. (Simon had only two magnums of claret in his cellar when he died.)

 

Smith, Adam

 

• The cheapness of wine seems to be a cause, not of drunkenness, but of sobriety. ...People are seldom guilty of excess in what is their daily fare... On the contrary, in the countries which, either from excessive heat or cold, produce no grapes, and where wine consequently is dear and a rarity, drunkenness is a common vice.  (The Wealth of Nations)

 

Sokolin, William

 

• What is the definition of a good wine? It should start and end with a smile.

 

Spenser, Edmund

 

• Pour out the wine without restraint or stay, Pour not by cups, but by the bellyful,  Pour out to all that will.

  

St. Jerome

 

• Wine is the first weapon that devils use in attacking the young
  

 

Stevenson, Robert Louis | (1850 – 1894) Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer

 

• Wine is bottled poetry.

 

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Tchelistcheff, Andre

 

• Appreciating old wine is like making love to a very old lady. It is possible. It can even be enjoyable. But it requires a bit of imagination.

 

Tennyson, Alfred Lord

• After-dinner talk  Across the walnuts and the wine.

 

Theogenis

 

• Wine is wont to show the mind of man.

 

Thucydides | Greek Historian, Author of the "History of the Peloponnesian War", a documentation of the 411 BC battle between Athens and Sparta.

• The peoples of the Mediterranean began to emerge from barbarism when they learned to cultivate the olive and the vine.

 

The Talmud (Jewish Holy Book – 200 BC)

 

• Wine is at the head of all medicines; where wine is lacking, drugs are necessary.

 

Up to the age of forty eating is beneficial. After forty, drinking.

 

Trowbridge, John Townsend

 

• With years a richer life begins, the spirit mellow: ripe age gives tones to violins, wine, and good fellows.

 

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Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) (1694-1778) | French Writer

• (Wine is) the divine juice of September.

• I serve your Beaune to my friends, but your Volnay I keep for myself.

 

Voss, Johann  Heinrich

 

• He who loves not wine, women and song remains a fool his whole life long.

 

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Waugh, Alec | British Novelist

 

• By comparing what we know today with what the ancients appear to have known we can guess at the kinds of wine they drank.

 

Waugh, Harry (1904-2001) | Export Director, Harvey's of Bristol

 

• The first duty of wine is to be Red... the second is to be a Burgundy"

 

Weiss, Nik

 

• Sweetness belongs in the Mosel wine like the bubbles belong in the Champagne.

 

Wells, Orson (1915-1985) | Orson Welles, American Writer, Actor, Director & Producer

 

• My doctor told me to stop hosting intimate dinners for four.

  Unless I began inviting three other people

Wright, Steven

 

• I made wine out of raisins so I wouldn’t have to wait for it to age.

 

Wycherly

• Wine gives us liberty, love takes it away.wine makes us princes, love makes us beggars. (The Country Life)

 

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Xenophon (430-354 BC) | Greek Historian, Soldier, and Mercenary

 

• So far as drinking is concerned, you have my hearty approval; for wine does of a truth moisten the soul and lull our griefs to sleep....[and with small cups] we shall ...be brought by its gentle persuasion to a more sportive mood. (Quoting Socrates)

 

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