THE    FRONT PAGE "QUOTES"
Here's a collection, by popular demand, of the quotes
that have appeared from time to time on the home page of this site.

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.

----ROBERT MONDAVI
"Harvests of Joy"
Autobiography

..Hermippus...[Old Greek poet] puts into the mouth of Dionysus a description of just such a wine as that Chateau Margaux 1871.  'But there is a wine which they call "the mellow," and from the mouth of its jar as it is opened, there comes a fragrance of violets, a fragrance of roses, a fragrance of hyacinth. A divine perfume pervades the high-roofed house, ambrosia and nectar in one."  As the last drops of the Margaux were being sipped, a guest savouring preciously every fragrance, said with unaffected humility: "When I drink wines such as these, I ask myself what merit I have acquired that I should be allowed to experience such beauty."

--H. Warner Allen, "The Romance of Wine"

"Wine in California is still in the experimental stage; and when you taste a vintage, grave economical questions are involved. The beginning of vine-planting is like the beginning of mining for the precious metals: the wine-grower also "prospects." One corner of land after another is tried with one kind of grape after another. This is a failure; that is better; third is best. So, bit by bit, they grope about for their Clos Vougeot and Lafite. Those lodes and pockets of earth, more precious than the precious ores, that yield inimitable fragrance and soft fire, those virtuous Bonanzas where the soil has sublimated under sun and stars to something finer, and the wine is bottled poetry."
--Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Silverado Squatters"

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.
-- Ernest Hemingway

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?" 

"Wine and Food I"
-- Gerald Asher

"[God] made wine to gladden the heart of men; do not, therefore, when at table you see your neighbor pour wine into his glass, be eager to mingle water with it. Why would you drown truth?.. Man...is framed in  a manner that he may raise his glass to his mouth...Let us, then, with glass in hand, adore this benevolent wisdom; --let us adore and drink!"
---Benjamin Franklin, Letter to Abbé Morellet, 1779

"If it's red, French, costs too much, and tastes like the water that's left in the vase after the flowers have died and rotted, it's probably Burgundy."
--Jay McInerney, "Bacchus & Me"

  Our hypothetical rich client might even have ordered a Pommard, because it was listed at a higher price.....He would have never learned [about other wines].  A man who is rich in his adolescence is almost doomed to be a dilettante at table. This is not because all millionaires are stupid but because they are not impelled to experiment.
--A.J. Liebling, Between Meals

It fills one's mouth with a gushing freshness--then goes down cool and feverless--then you do not feel it quarrelling with your liver--no, it is rather a peacemaker, and it lies as  quiet as it did in the grape; then it is as fragrant as the queen bee, and the more ethereal part of it mounts into the brain...like Aladdin about his enchanted palace so gently that you do not feel his step.
---John Keats, 1819, on claret

On wine dinners...

[There is] ordinarily ...an actual want of judgment...There is frequently a parsimonious calculation on the one hand, or an ostentatious profusion  and mixture on the other. The art in using wine is to produce the greatest possible quantity of present gladness without any future depression....Too many sorts of wines confuse the palate and derange digestion....Drinking too quick is much more to be avoided than drinking too slow...Drinking too quick confuses both the stomach and the brain; drinking too slow disappoints them."
Thomas Walker,
The Original, 1850

Wine is the "healthiest and most health-giving of drinks."
--Louis Pasteur

NB: Another old doctor who predated American Medical Association advice by quite a bit....

"....I loved the [story] about how a great wine connoisseur invited the composer [Brahms] to dinner. 'This is the Brahms of my cellar,' he said to his guests, producing a dust-covered bottle and pouring some onto 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. 'Hmmm,' Brahms muttered. 'Better bring your Beethoven!' "
--Artur Rubinstein, "My Young Years"

A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows.

---George Bernard Shaw
On wine.

We ...drank a Chateauneuf du Pape which tasted like nice chewed grass. This was Rosemary's defnition...Personally, I found as little suggestion of chewed grass, eve of nice chewed grass, as I had found of rose-petals in Tavel, or of gun-flint in Saint Peray. By this time I was growing humble about my indiscriminating olfactory nerves, and content to accept the verdicts of my friends.
--G. B. Stern, "Bouquet"

Technology advances are welcomed by all in our Industry - assuming they have a positive impact on wine quality. Let's not forget, however, that technology invariably enables us to replicate what we would do carefully by hand on a much larger scale ... 
-----Peter Gago, Chief Winemaker, Penfolds, on my Bulletin Board, December, 2003

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

---Nik Weiss, Weingut St-Urbanshof,
at the German Wine Society Annual Convention, May, 2004

"Last week I had to offer my publisher a bottle that was far too good for him, simply because there was nothing between the insulting and the superlative."
---A. J. Liebling, "Between Meals"

"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."
---Anthelme Brillat-Savarin,  "The Physiology of Taste"

THE PERILS OF BLIND TASTINGS:
"I remember three constant frequenters of the docks...who used to express themselves in their peculiar oracular way, so authoritatively, that I resolved to put their judgment to the test.....I used to tell the cooper to draw two glasses from the same pipe, and to hand them as if they were from different numbers.  I may say that the trick upon them was invariably successful, for they were sure after tasting, and retasting, and much profound thought, to pronounce the verdict that, although similar, one possessed rather more of this, or that, than the other.  I kept my own counsel, but was convinced...that in wine-tasting and wine-talk there is an enormous amount of humbug."
---T.G. Shaw, Wine, The Vine and the Cellar, 1864

"Broad minded professionals don't mind making fools of themselves in the company of others in the business [when doing blind tastings].  At least...their friends in the trade know how really difficult it is to identify wines, and they all have comforting knowledge of their common manifold blunders."
---Michael Broadbent, Wine Tasting

BLIND TASTINGS ARE TO WINE WHAT STRIP POKER IS TO LOVE.--Kermit Lynch

Sauvignon blanc] bangs you in the mouth--like an old peasant with his wooden shoe......The Sauvignon is the whipper-snapper. It's not solid enough. It's violent, it's sharp, it bites, it cries, it's like a ferocious dog you keep on a leash.
--Troisgros, as quoted by Israel Shenker in the N.Y. Times

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.
----Dr. Patrick McGovern, et al.
The Origins & Ancient History of Wine

It had the taste of an apple peeled with a steel knife.
--Aldous Huxley (1894–1963),Sebastian Barnack, in Time Must Have a Stop, ch 12 (1944), assessing a Roederer 1916 champagne.

".....form impressions and opinions but do NOT invest in maintaining them in order to have been "right;" listen to the wines, and follow their stories."
---Terry Theise, famed German wine importer, while appearing as a guest on the E-Zine BB, July 2001

"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."
--Adam Smith, "The Wealth of Nations"

"[The senior partner] sipped [the French wine grower's Burgundy], rolled it round his tongued and swallowed it while the French principal sat complacently waiting for the expected praise. "Urine," he said. ...whereupon the Frenchman leapt to his feet, threw down his napkin and stormed out of the room. "Where has he gone," asked the senior partner? "Well, Sir, ... you did describe his Burgundy as er...urine."  "Fussy old gentleman isn't he? Pass the potatoes," said the senior partner.

--Douglas Sutherland in "Raise your glasses," a true story

"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."
--George Mikes

"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."
--Xenophon, quoting Socrates

The late Herman Makiewicz, a writer and wit, tippled a little too much at [a dinner party], with the result that he became ill in the midst of the repast and committed the unpardonable social error of losing his food at the ..table...A deadly hush descended...Mankiewicz  broke the silence himself. ..."It's all right, Arthur, the white wine came up with the fish."

--Ezra Goodman, The Fifty Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood

Burgundy makes you think of silly things, Bordeaux makes you talk of them and Champagne makes you do them. -- Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

“I feel a genuine sadness about vertical tastings that has always left me feeling as if I needed a soul-cleansing afterwards,” Dan Berger, as quoted in The Billionaire's Vinegar

"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." 
--Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

 "A gourmet ordered with dinner in a restaurant a bottle of magnificent old vintage Burgundy. The waiter who brought it handled the bottle carelessly. "Look here," exclaimed the gourmet, "you haven't shaken up the bottle, have you?" 

   "No sir, " the waiter replied, "but I will." And he suited the action to the word.

---Julian Street, "Table Topics"

I was in New York. I was lonely and miserable (this was in 1949). .. I found myself passing the 21 Club ....and bought a modest half bottle...I spent my time looking at the really wonderful wine list.  ]T]here was a 1869 Mouton. Later, I was taken back to the bar and introduced to Mr. Kreindler, who was part-owner of the 21 Club. He gave me an excellent brandy...and presented me with a bottle of the Mouton '69, which I had never hoped to drink, and could not possibly hope to buy. ...It turned out to be marvellous...Where else in the world could such a magnificent gesture be made?
--George Rainbird, Old Wine and Old Bottles

"Every man in this country who is rich enough to pay income-tax, has, at one time or other of his life, effected a very remarkable transaction in wine. Sometimes he has made such a bargain as he never expects to make again. Sometimes he is the only man in England, not a peer of the realm, who has got a single drop of a certain famous vintage which has perished from the face of the earth. Sometimes he has purchased, with a friend, a few last left dozens from the cellar of a deceased potentate...  Sometimes he has been at an out of the way country inn...has asked if there is no other wine in the house; has been informed that there is some "sourish foreign stuff that nobody ever drinks;" has called for a bottle of it; has found it Burugndy, such as all France cannot now produce...and has bought the whole stock for an "old song."  ....In all these wine conversations, whatever variety there may be in the various experiences related, one of two great first principles is invariably assumed by each speaker in succession. Either he knows more about it than anyone else--or he has got better wine of his own even than the excellent wine he is now drinking."

Men can get together sometimes without talking of women, without talking of horses, without talking of politics; but they cannot assemble to eat a meal together without talking of wine; and they cannot talk of wine without assuming to each one of themselves an absolute infallibility in connexion with that single subject, which they would shrink from asserting in relation to any other topic under the sun.
--Charles Tovey, Wit, Wisdom, and Morals

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

---Len Evans

 The wines were chiefly port, sherry and hock; claret, and even Burgundy, being then designated 'poor thin washy stuff.' A perpetual thirst seemed to come over people, both men and women, as soon as they had tasted their soup...How all this sort of eating and drinking ended was obvious, from the prevalence of gout, and the necessity of everyone making the pill-box their constant bedroom companion. "

--Rees H. Gronow, "Reminiscences"

 
"There were six or seven clubs [at Oxford] with their own premises; some, like the Grid, highly respectable, others, Hogarthian drinking dens...The tradition of port drinking lingered. ...Yquem had of course a unique reputation. ...Nowadays, I am told men privately drink milk, and when they entertain, do so to entice girls. It is tedious for the young to be constantly reminded what much finer fellows their fathers were and what a much more enjoyable time we had. But there you are; we were and we did. "

--Evelyn Waugh, "First Faltering Steps: Drinking"

"The discovery of a wine is of greater moment than the discovery of a constellation. The universe is too full of stars."
--Benjamin Franklin

"..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." 
--Maurice Healy, Claret

Burgundy at its best overtops claret at its best...You will only drink four or five bottles of truly first-class Burgundy in your whole life (and you will be lucky if you find so many....Only 3 have rung the bell with me....)  But you can drink claret of the highest class several times in a year-- claret that should be drunk kneeling with every sip consecrated as a libation to Heaven. ....[My third of the three great Burgundies I have had]  was nearly twenty years ago. ....I took one sip; I closed my eyes, and every beautiful thing that I had ever known crowded into my memory....The song of armies sweeping into battle,...the glint of sunshine after rain on the leaves of the forest...the voices of children singing hymns, all these and a hundred other things seemed to be blended into one magnificence. 

--Maurice Healy, "Stay Me with Flagons"

Red with meat, white with fish, except lox or herring. Rosé with any endangered species or an ice cream cone.  Wine should be stored in a cool, dry place. The glove compartment of a Jaguar or an abandoned washing machine are my personal favorites.  Good French wine should carry the phrase: "Mise en bouteilles au chateau." This assures you that only the owner of the vineyard has had a chance to tamper with the wine.

--Richard Smith, "A Gentleman's Guide" to understanding fine wines

I am never so successful as when I am a little merry: let me throw on a bottle of champagne, and I never lose--at least I never feel my losses, which is exactly the same thing.... And then, what man can pretend to be a believer in love, who is an abjurer of wine?
--Richard Brinsley Sheridan, School for Scandal

Instead of protecting the profits of a few politically connected wholesalers, states should be exploring ways to expand the choices available to consumers.
USA Today, August 26, 1997

You needn’t tell me that a man who doesn’t love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He’s simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.
---Saki [H. H. Munro] (1870–1916), . Clovis, in "The Match-Maker," published in The Chronicles of Clovis (1911).

This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don’t want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. You lose the taste.
---Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961),  Count Mippipopolous, in The Sun Also Rises (1926).

Other countries drink to get drunk, and this is accepted by everyone; in France, drunkenness is a consequence, never an intention. A drink is felt as the spinning out of a pleasure, not as the necessary cause of an effect which is sought: wine is not only a philtre, it is also the leisurely act of drinking.
---Roland Barthes (1915–80), French semiologist. Mythologies, "Wine and Milk" (1957; tr. 1972).

Mr. Edward Carson, QC:
Do you drink
champagne yourself?
Mr. Oscar Wilde: Yes; iced
champagne is a favourite drink of mine— strongly against my
doctor’s orders.
Mr. Edward Carson, QC:
Never mind your
doctor’s orders, sir!
Mr. Oscar Wilde: I never do.
--Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), Exchange, 4 April 1895, during Wilde’s prosecution of the Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel, Regina (Wilde) v. Queensberry.

Drink a glass of wine after your soup and you steal a ruble from your doctor.
--Russian proverb

--Henry Leigh, Carols of Cocayne, "On Corpulence"

Porter:  Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep and urine.  Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance.

--Macbeth, II, iii
Shakespeare

--Comments by members of the Jury judging Bordeaux wines submitted under the new 1855 classification at the 1855 World's Fair in  Paris, as noted in 1855: A History of the Bordeaux Classification