Quotes & Sayings About Wines

I love everything that is old; old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines. — Oliver Goldsmith

He had come to us only three years earlier, but had already won general sympathy, mainly because he "knew how to bring society together." His house was never without guests, and it seemed he would have been unable to live without them. He had to have guests to dinner every day, even if only two, even if only one, but without guests he would not sit down to eat. He gave formal dinners, too, under all sorts of pretexts, sometimes even the most unexpected. The food he served, though not refined, was abundant, the cabbage pies were excellent, and the wines made up in quantity for what they lacked in quality. In the front room stood a billiard table, surrounded by quite decent furnishings; that is, there were even paintings of English racehorses in black frames on the walls, which, as everyone knows, constitute a necessary adornment of any billiard room in a bachelor's house. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

When you shop online, wouldn't you like to sample the bouquet of wines, the aroma of cigars, or the subtle fragrance of flowers before surrendering your credit card number? Surely more companies will want to aromatize their Web presence when they realize there's a device that can produce genuinely pleasing, authentic fragrances. — Charles Platt

Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication. — Simone Weil

What's important in a cellar is having wines that have a broad range of drinkability, which California Cabernet does. Wines with a broad range of drinkability give you a lot of flexibility; they are the sort of wines that make me feel secure. I think of my wine cellar as security - if the apocalypse comes, I can just go down to the cellar. — Robert M. Parker Jr.

When I heard the idea of a Slayer wine, I tasted the wines they suggested for us. To be honest, I was a bit skeptical at first before I tasted it, but once I tried it, I thought, 'You know what? This is actually really good. A really fruity and round type of flavor for a red wine.' It's very flavorful and tasted awesome! — Tom Araya

The first duty of wine is to be red. Don't talk to me of your white wines. — Henri Murger

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. — Charles Edward Montague

Tasting scotch was an intense experience; it didn't have the lovely layering of wines, — Daniella Brodsky

If Claret is the king of natural wines, Burgundy is the queen. — Moliere

No hurry, she thought, a warmth growing inside. All the best wines took time. — Ally Shields

The premise of Nossiter in 'Mondovino' would have been a lot more accurate when I started writing about wine in 1978 than when the movie was made in 2003. When I started, I was enormously critical of California wines, and I thought the entire wine industry was on a real slippery slope. — Robert M. Parker Jr.

Fine worries, like fine wines, are at their best only after they have been properly mellowed. — Dan Greenburg

I think it is a great error to consider a heavy tax on wines as a tax on luxury. On the contrary, it is a tax on the health of our citizens. — Thomas Jefferson

What's foreign one can't always keep quite clear of,
For good things, oft, are not so near;
A German can't endure the French to see or hear of,
Yet drinks their wines with hearty cheer. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

In their censures of luxury, the fathers are extremely minute and circumstantial;89 and among the various articles which excite their pious indignation, we may enumerate false hair, garments of any colour except white, instruments of music, vases of gold or silver, downy pillows (as Jacob reposed his head on a stone), white bread, foreign wines, public salutations, the use of warm baths, and the practice of shaving the beard, which, according to the expression of Tertullian, is a lie against our own faces, and an impious attempt to improve the works of the Creator. — Edward Gibbon

... the vintage of history is forever repeating ~ same old vines, same old wines! — E.A. Bucchianeri

There is no question that Australia's most dramatic assault on the world market has been with its value wines. These are generally not from specific appellations but blends made by huge enterprises like Penfolds, Rosemount or Casella Estate - the group behind Yellow Tail. — Robert M. Parker Jr.

Generally speaking, when Australian winemakers try to make delicate, European-styled wines of finesse and lightness, the wines often come across as pale imitations of the originals. One exception is Australian Riesling, delicious, dry wines meant to be consumed in their first two years of life. — Robert M. Parker Jr.

Soon you catch your first glimpse of a vineyard basking in the sun, its broad leaves silently turning sunlight into sugar, ripening vitis vinifera, the European grapes that make the world's finest wines. For a moment you might imagine you've been mysteriously wafted to the French countryside, but no, this is the East End of Long Island, the most exciting new wine region in North America. You've reached your destination, but your journey of discovery has barely begun — Jane Taylor Starwood

It may seem hard to believe - unless you sit down and taste them - but some of the world's greatest sweet wines are made in the Rutherglen region of Victoria, Australia. — Robert M. Parker Jr.

What makes these special Beaujolais attractive is the same thing that has always made Beaujolais attractive: the price. Given the insane prices of so many wines right now, Beaujolais and the delicious wines pouring in from southern Italy and Sicily keep many wine drinkers from switching to iced tea. — Frank J. Prial

One of the rarest and most beautiful things in this world is to meet someone who has the ability to intoxicate you. Every moment with her was exhilarating, and every moment without her was spent captivated by thoughts about her. She was like the finest of wines. And I was getting drunk. — Richie Singh

Yes, expertise puts on in position to have further, cognitive pleasures, but these pleasures are distinct from the sensory pleasure of tasting wines — Kent Bach

As in the case of wines that improve with age, the oldest friendships ought to be the most delightful. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Wines are like people. Some are perfect but boring, some are precocious but fail to live up to their promise, and some may be flawed, but the way they may develop is endlessly fascinating. — Michael Broadbent

There are some amazingly good wines for five dollars a bottle. — Karen MacNeil

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. — Hector Hugh Munro

Anyone who tries to make you believe that he knows all about wines is obviously a fake. — Leon Adams

As I was a stranger in Olondria, I knew nothing of the splendour of its coasts, nor of Bain, the Harbour City, whose lights and colours spill into the ocean like a cataract of roses. I did not know the vastness of the spice markets of Bain, where the merchants are delirious with scents, I had never seen the morning mists adrift above the surface of the green Illoun, of which the poets sing; I had never seen a woman with gems in her hair, nor observed the copper glinting of the domes, nor stood upon the melancholy beaches of the south while the wind brought in the sadness from the sea. Deep within the Fayaleith, the Country of the Wines, the clarity of light can stop the heart: it is the light the local people call 'the breath of angels' ... — Sofia Samatar

I have known many true connoisseurs, with excellent tastes that range across the humanities and the culinary arts
and they never fail to have a fatal effect on my self-esteem. When I find myself sitting at dinner next to someone who knows just as much about novels as I do but has somehow also found the mental space to adore and be knowledgeable about the opera, have strong opinions about the relative rankings of Renaissance painters, an encyclopedic knowledge of the English civil war, of French wines
I feel an anxiety that nudges beyond the envious into the existential. How did she find the time? — Zadie Smith

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

One looks back to what was called a 'wine-party' with a sort of wonder. Thirty lads round a table covered with bad sweetmeats, drinking bad wines, telling bad stories, singing bad songs over and over again. Milk punch-- smoking--ghastly headache-- frightful spectacle of dessert-table next morning, and smell of tobacco--your guardian, the clergyman, dropping in, in the midst of this--expecting to find you deep in Algebra, and discovering the Gyp administering soda-water.

There were young men who despised the lads who indulged in the coarse hospitalities of wine-parties, who prided themselves in giving recherche little French dinners. Both wine-party-givers and dinner-givers were Snobs. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Imported actors, like certain wines, sometimes do not stand the ocean trip. This can be as true of American actors in Europe as it is of European actors in America. — Edna Ferber

At the English Revolution, when William of Orange came to the throne, the introduction of French wines into the country was prohibited, and this gave a great impetus to the manufacture of cyder and care in the production of cyder of the best description. — Sabine Baring-Gould

There are thousands of wines
that can take over our minds.
Don't think all ecstasies
are the same!
Jesus was lost in his love for God.
His donkey was drunk with barley. — Rumi

When does real love begin?
At first it was a fire, eclipses, short circuits, lightning and fireworks; the incense, hammocks, drugs, wines, perfumes; then spasm and honey, fever, fatigue, warmth, currents of liquid fire, feast and orgies; then dreams, visions, candlelight, flowers, pictures; then images out of the past, fairy tales, stories, then pages out of a book, a poem; then laughter, then chastity.
At what moment does the knife wound sink so deep that the flesh begins to weep with love?
At first power, power, then the wound, and love, and love and fears, and the loss of the self, and the gift, and slavery. At first I ruled, loved less; then more, then slavery. Slavery to his image, his odor, the craving, the hunger, the thirst, the obsession. — Anais Nin

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) — George Saintsbury

It would be hard to imagine two more improbable founders for a movement as ascetic as communism. While earnestly desiring the downfall of capitalism, Engels made himself rich and comfortable from all its benefits. He kept a stable of fine horses, rode to hounds at weekends, enjoyed the best wines, maintained a mistress, hobnobbed with the elite of Manchester at the fashionable Albert Club - in short, did everything one would expect of a successful member of the gentry. Marx, meanwhile, constantly denounced the bourgeoisie but lived as bourgeois a life as he could manage, sending his daughters to private schools and boasting at every opportunity of his wife's aristocratic background. — Bill Bryson

When I began visiting Bordeaux in 1979, only a handful of writers were there to taste the wines in the spring (and nearly all were British). — Robert M. Parker Jr.

Last Christmas they sat beside the hearths
Secure, together, cracking roast chestnuts

Or stale jokes about holies and ivies
As red wines cooled down another hot year

Today, even the vines threaten to stream
The streets with banners of another fire. — Jack Mapanje

The Germans are exceedingly fond of Rhine wines; they are put up in tall, slender bottles, and are considered a pleasant beverage. One tells them from vinegar by the label. — Mark Twain

I want to make wines that harmonize with food - wines that almost hug your tongue with gentleness. — Robert Mondavi

The first wine I drank, a Chateau Haut-Brion, I was 22, it was my first glass of wine, and I discovered voluptuousness. From there, I started tasting French wines, then Spanish wines, then Italian wines. — Carole Bouquet

In the wine world, crusaders would have wine consumers believe that the only wines of merit are something completely indefinable but which they call 'authentic' or 'natural.' — Robert M. Parker Jr.

Champagne ... the wine of kings, the king of wines — Guy De Maupassant

The first dinner-party of a bride's career is a momentous occasion, entailing a world of small anxieties. The accomplishments which have won her acclaim in the three years since she left the schoolroom are no longer enough. It is no longer enough to dress exquisitely, to chuse jewels exactly appropriate to the situation, to converse in French, to play the pianoforte and sing. Now she must turn her attention to French cooking and French wines. Though other people may advise her upon these important matters, her own taste and inclinations must guide her. She is sure to despise her mother's style of entertaining and wish to do things differently. In London fashionable people dine out four, five times a week. However will a new bride - nineteen years old and scarcely ever in a kitchen before - think of a meal to astonish and delight such jaded palates? — Susanna Clarke

Wine glasses, like fine wines, have always been a symbol of civilized living. — Alexis Lichine

Essentially, wines are fermented grape juice, so I'm trying to make the point that the wine world is about scores and marketing and kind of creating a scarce resource where they don't really exist. — Joe Bastianich

Liberty is like those solid and tasty foods or those full-bodied wines which are appropriate for nourishing and strengthening robust constitutions that are used to them, but which overpower, ruin and intoxicate the weak and delicate who are not suited for them. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

For one country is different from another; its earth is different, as are its stones, wines, bread, meat, and everything that grows and thrives in a specific region. — Paracelsus

There are many great wine producers from all over the world making fantastic wines. Italian wines especially are making an enormous comeback after sometimes being labeled as inexpensive jug wines. — Rocco DiSpirito

Lexington wasn't a great city, like Philadelphia or New York, but around the Courthouse square, and along Main Street and Broadway, brick buildings reared two and three stories tall, and it was possible to buy almost anything: breeze-soft silks from France that came upriver from New Orleans, fine wines and cigars, pearl necklaces, and canes with ivory handles shaped like parrots or dogs'-heads or (in the case of Mary's older friend Cash Clay) scantily dressed ladies (but Cash was careful not to carry that one in company). — Barbara Hambly

People who are visiting Long Island find it's very beautiful, and they are quick to try Long Island foods, wines and other products. — Jerry Della Femina

There is nothing in the world like the extraordinary Shiraz and Grenache wines from South Australia. While the most sought-after are undeniably expensive (they're made in tiny quantities from ancient vines), they are huge, rich and concentrated, and represent some of planet Earth's most compelling wines. — Robert M. Parker Jr.

Southern barbecue is the closest thing we have in the U.S. to Europe's wines or cheeses; drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes. — John Shelton Reed

Only 10 percent of the people in the U.S. like dry wines. You shouldn't get down on people just because they like a little sugar. — Pat Paulsen

I want people to know their palate is a snowflake. We all like different things. Why should we all have the same taste in wines? — Gary Vaynerchuk

Musicals are to the theater what wines are to a substantial dinner. — George Jean Nathan

The people who make the greatest wines in the world, they love their dirt, they pick it up, they coddle it, they kiss it, they put it in a jar and it sits on their mantle in the living room, because they know. They know. — Gary Vaynerchuk

Growing old is God's privilege to you ... you only can be compared to any antique and old wine ... antiques are expensive and old wines taste best ... above all, it beats the alternative
DYING YOUNG. So cheer up and be grateful that God is giving you that privilege. — Peekey

They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar — Henry David Thoreau

Never be ashamed,' he said. '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.'
'How will I know which is which?'
'By the taste. You can only know a good wine if you have first tasted a bad one. — Paulo Coelho

If I had a humble spirit in my service who, when I asked for a glass of water, brought me the world's costliest wines blended in a chalice, I should dismiss him, in order to teach him that my pleasure consists, not in what I enjoy, but in having my own way. — Soren Kierkegaard

The best people, like the best wines, come from the hills. — Edward Abbey

Without sulfites, wine may smell and taste funky or re-ferment in the bottle. Many distributors and shop owners are consequently reluctant to stock wines made without sulfites. — Roger Morris

Halloween is tomorrow. A group of wine experts has actually come up with a list of the best wines to pair with Halloween candy. They say, White wine goes great with Skittles, red wine goes great with Twix, and ... we're alcoholics, aren't we? — Jimmy Fallon

I was never totally what we would now call 'politically correct,' even in my most militant phase. I always liked good food, good wines. I suppose it was because I had total confidence in myself. — Tariq Ali

Beyond this point on the river Cambridge became a kind of miniature Venice, its river water lapping up against the ancient stone of college walls, here mottled and reddened brick, there white stone. Stained, lichened, softened by water light. Here the river became a great north-south tunnel, a gothic castle from the river, flanked by locked iron gates, steps leading nowhere, labyrinths, trapdoors, landing stages where barges had unloaded their freight: crates of fine wines, flour, oats, candles, fine meats carried into the damp darkness of college cellars. — Rebecca Stott

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

But above everything, drink wines with love. They are like women - different, mysterious, fickle. And each wine has to be taken like a woman. This always begins with a rejection, done gracefully or rudely according to the woman's disposition, and in the end she will grant herself only to someone, who aspires her soul as well as her body. She will belong to the one, who knows how to uncover her with the utmost delicacy. — Luigi Veronelli

When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord's choicest wines. — Samuel Rutherford

Madeira is a wine like no other. It is fine wine in extremis. Heat and air, both the sworn enemies of most wines and wine makers, conspire to turn madeira into one of the most enthralling of the world's wines as well as the most resilient. Wines from the nineteenth and even the eighteenth centuries still retain an ethereal, youthful gloss, even after spending what is, in wine terms, an aeon in cask and bottle. Having gone through this extreme and often extensive ageing process, madeira is virtually indestructible. Once the cork is removed, the wine comes to no harm, even if the bottle is left on ullage for months, even for years on end. If ever there was a wine to take away with you to a desert island, this is it. — Richard Mayson

After all, Christmastide is the time of year for warming brandies, for assertive burgundies and meaty Medoc wines, and for gladsome whiskies. And an Islay malt: well, this is the octave of St Andrew, and you will doubtless recall that he is not only the patron saint of Alba, of Scotland, but was also a fisherman. How better to toast my favorite apostle (he being all the things I personally am not, starting with humble and self-effacing) than with the sea-salty dram of an Islay whisky? — Markham Shaw Pyle

Like the Baron, Mathilde developed a formula for acting out life as a series of roles - that is, by saying to herself in the morning while brushing her blond hair, "Today I want to become this or that person," and then proceeding to be that person.
One day she decided she would like to be an elegant representative of a well-known Parisian modiste and go to Peru. All she had to do was to act the role. So she dressed with care, presented herself with extraordinary assurance at the house of the modiste, was engaged to be her representative and given a boat ticket to Lima.
Aboard ship, she behaved like a French missionary of elegance. Her innate talent for recognizing good wines, good perfumes, good dressmaking, marked her as a lady of refinement. — Anais Nin

I opened a restaurant that had nothing but California wines. — Paul Prudhomme

We could in the United States make as great a variety of wines as are made in Europe, not exactly of the same kinds, but doubtless as good. — Thomas Jefferson

Until proven innocent, I regard all "gardenias" as I do footprints of the Snowman, engines that run on vacuum energy, or good wines from Savoie. — Luca Turin

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

As far as a cocktail, I do like good wines, basically with meals, and good champagnes. — Bobby Sherman

Limit yourself to wines with names you can't pronounce that are made from grapes harvested during or before Full House season one. — The Betches

It is giving me a great satisfaction, because I had the notion that we could make great wines equal to the greatest wines in the world, and everybody said it was impossible. — Robert Mondavi

Most of the wine in the world sells for two dollars a bottle. Quite a bit sells for four dollars to five dollars a bottle, and there are many that sell for ten dollars a bottle. Then you have wines that sell for three hundred dollars a bottle. What the world needs is a beer that's worth five dollars a bottle. I think that would be great. If all beer prices are forced down to the level of Busch Bavarian, none of us will be there. — Fritz Maytag

As I've grown older, I've developed an appreciation for wines that are immediately gratifying but that can also provide great satisfaction over several years. — Robert M. Parker Jr.

BALLS! We want the finest wines available to humanity. We want them HERE, and we want them NOW. — Bruce Robinson

Wine is the most noble and beneficial of alcoholic drinks. Wine is for the sedentary whose work is thinking. Natural wines have been used without drunkenness by the millions of human beings for ages. They supply with iron, tannin and vitamins. — Arthur Brisbane

All wines are by their very nature full of reminiscence, the golden tears and red blood of summers that are gone. — Richard Le Gallienne

O the sad frugality of the middle-income mind. O the humorless neatness of an intellectuality which buys mass-produced candlesticks and carefully puts one at each end of every philosophical mantlepiece! How far it lies from the playfulness of Him who composed such odd and needless variations on the themes of leaf and backbone, eye and nose! A thousand praises that it has only lately managed to lay its cold hand on the wines, the sauces, and the cheeses of the world! A hymn of thanksgiving that it could not reach into the depths of the sea to clamp its grim simplicities over the creatures that swim luminously in the dark! A shout of rejoicing for the fish who wears his eyeballs at the ends of long stalks, and for the jubilant laughter of the God who holds him in life with a daily bravo at the bravura of his being! — Robert Farrar Capon

My first marriage was not happy. I married him because I was impressed that he knew which wines to order and how to leave his visiting card. Ridiculous reasons. — Jean Seberg

I look at each one of my restaurants, and I want my personality to come out. Some are serious, some are intense when it comes to food and wines, some are meat masters supreme. I enjoy all my guests. — Michael Mina

Wines, soups, desserts, dessert soups, and more wines. — Tom Reiss

Chef Matt Accarrino has the best pasta in San Francisco, and Shelley Lindgren is one of my favorite sommeliers. Their attention to detail in the service, food, and amazing wines will blow anyone away. — Elizabeth Falkner

Wines are like women in that it's often the imperfections that fascinate. — Sam Neill

Black vintners in this country make some really great wines. Explore a wine list and you will find at least one of our wines in the best restaurants. Buy a bottle for your table, and let management know you appreciate them including a Black winemaker in their stock. — Andre Hueston Mack

Back in 1990, there were fewer than 20 wineries in and around Paso Robles, a farming community midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Most of the wines produced there were rustic, highly tannic and alcoholic, with little charm or finesse. — Robert M. Parker Jr.

There are many wines that taste great, but do not drink well — Michael Broadbent

When a great figure passed through a city of Burgundy or Champagne, the corporation of the city turned out to deliver an address and present him with four silver goblets in which there were four wines. On the first goblet he read the inscription "monkey wine," on the second "lion wine," on the third "sheep wine," on the fourth "swine wine." These four inscriptions expressed the four descending degrees of drunkenness: the first, which enlivens; the second, which irritates; the third, which stupefies; finally the last, which brutalizes. — Victor Hugo

Roast beef and plum pudding are also held in superstitious veneration, and port and sherry maintain their grounds as the only true English wines; all others being considered vile, outlandish beverages. — Washington Irving

Words are, like wines. — Santosh Kalwar

My brother Julio and I worked to improve the quality of wines from California and to put fine wine on American dinner tables at a price people could afford — Ernest Gallo