"Wine is bottled poetry." - Robert Louis Stevenson


"Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection, and it offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing." - Ernest Hemingway, "Death in the Afternoon"


“Wine is a living liquid containing no preservatives. Its life cycle comprises youth, maturity, old age, and death. When not treated with reasonable respect it will sicken and die." - Julia Child 


“Food without wine is a corpse; wine without food is a ghost; united and well matched they are as body and soul, living partners.” - Andre Simon

"In vino veritas [In wine is truth]." - Proverb quoted by Plato, also attributed to Pliny the Elder


"Wine makes a symphony of a good meal." - Fernande Garvin, "The Art of French Cooking"


"There are no standards of taste in wine... Each man's own taste is the standard, and a majority vote cannot decide for him or in any slightest degree affect the supremacy of his own standard." - Mark Twain


"Wine is sunlight, held together by water." - Galileo Galilei


"The wines that one best remembers are not necessarily the finest that one has ever tasted, and the highest quality may fail to delight so much as some far more humble beverage drunk in more favorable surroundings." - H. Warner Allen


"For a gourmet wine is not a drink but a condiment, provided that your host has chosen correctly." - Edouard De Pomaine, French author


"One not only drinks the wine, one smells it, observes it, tastes it, sips it and--one talks about it." - King Edward VII


"A glass of good wine is a gracious creature, and reconciles poor mortality to itself, and that is what few things can do." - Sir Walter Scott 


"The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest." - William Blake 


"...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 the latchkeys in their pockets and no last train to catch." - Maurice Healy, "Claret"


“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


"To claim that wines should not be changed is a heresy; the palate becomes saturated and after the third glass the best of wines arouses nothing but an obscure sensation." - Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, "The Physiology of Taste"

"I drink champagne when I win, to celebrate ... and I drink champagne when I lose to console myself." - Napoleon


"Wine makes every meal an occasion, every table more elegant, every day more civilized." - Andre Simon, "Commonsense of Wine"


"Making good wine is a skill. Fine wine is an art." - Robert Mondavi, "Harvests Of Joy," Autobiography


"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


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


"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"


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


"May our love be like good wine, grow stronger as it grows older." - Old English Toast


"I like Champagne, because it always tastes as though my foot's asleep." - Art Buchwald


" I cook with wine. Sometimes I even add it to the food." - W.C. Fields


"A fine meal...is a delight in itself; add a glass of wine--gleaming red or translucent greenish gold--and delectation will be doubled." - Alexis Lichine, "New Encyclopedia of Wine and Spirits"


"Like human beings, a wine's taste is going to depend a great deal on its origins and its upbringing." - Linda Johnson-Bell, "Pairing Wine and Food"


"It's impossible to separate a great wine from a great experience." - Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher, "The Wall Street Journal Guide to Wine"


"What is better than to sit at the table at the end of the day and drink wine with friends, or substitutes for friends?" - James Joyce


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


"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 judgement 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 though, 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 Vinte and the Cellar"