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.”
“Wine experts can’t resist making predictions. In 1990, wine lover Richard Nixon prophesied that the Chinese would someday match the French in the quality of their wines; this despite a Chinese carte des vins that featured sweet red wine and a grape called Cow’s Nipple. In the mid-1980s, a well-known New York wine merchant asserted that an $8 Cabernet from Chile was as good as Lafite, and auction prices would eventually reflect this little-known fact. Wine coolers too, as I recall, were expected to expose a vast new market to the pleasures of wine drinking. The coolers bombed, [a nice bottle of Lafite will set you back $250 or more], and Chilean cabernet is still mostly eight bucks.” — Stephen Tanzer, Forbes, May 6, 1996
“A man will be eloquent if you give him good wine.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Man
“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.
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
“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.”
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.
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
Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say it makes him more pleasing to others
“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.’”
