Filmmaker/winemaker Francis Ford Coppola says the two professions are almost the same and that each depends on source material and takes a lot of time to perfect. The big difference: “Today’s winemakers still worry about quality.”
“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.” –copied from a 16th Century manuscript
Port is not for the very young, the vain and the active. It is the comfort of age and the companion of the scholar and the philosopher. – Evelyn Waugh
“Wine is the most civilized thing in the world.” – Ernest Hemingway
“And water is on the Bishop’s board and the Higher Thinker’s shrine,
But I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine.” – G.K. Chesterton
“My only regret in life is that I did not drink more Champagne.” – John Maynard Keynes
“Gentlemen, in the little moment that remains to us between the crisis and the catastrophe, we may as well drink a glass of Champagne.” – Paul Claudel
“I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food!!” – Anonymous
“Champagne for our real friends and real pain for our sham friends!”
“Wine had such ill effects on Noah’s health that it was all he could do to live 950 years. Show me a total abstainer that ever lived that long.” – Will Rogers
In victory, you deserve champagne, in defeat, you need it. – Napoleon
There are two reasons for drinking wine…when you are thirsty, to cure it; the other, when you are not thirsty, to prevent it… prevention is better than cure. – Thomas Love Peacock
Wine improves with age. The older I get, the better I like it. – Anonymous
Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance. – Benjamin Franklin
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. – Medieval German saying
“The First Duty of wine is to be Red…the second is to be a Burgundy” — Harry Waugh
“In wine one beholds the heart of another” — Anonymous
“Never understood a single word he said but I helped him drink his wine…and he always had some mighty fine wine.” — 3 Dog Night
“If all be true that I do think, there are five reasons we should drink. Good friends, good times, or being dry, or lest we should be by and by, or any other reason why”
Thomas Jefferson on wine:
“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.”
“Good wine is a necessity of life for me.”
“I rejoice as a moralist at the prospect of a reduction of the duties on wine by our national legislature…. Its extended use will carry health and comfort to a much enlarged circle.”
“Wine … the true old man’s milk and restorative cordial.”
“I wonder what the vintners buy one half so precious as the stuff they sell.” – Omar Khayyam
“Wine can of their wits the wise beguile, Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.” – Homer, “Odyssey (9th c. B.C.)
“When there is plenty of wine, sorrow and worry take wing.” – Ovid, “The Art of Love” (c. A.D. 8)
“If penicillin can cure those that are ill, Spanish sherry can bring the dead back to life.” – Sir Alexander Fleming
“From wine what sudden friendship springs!” – John Gay “The Squire and the Cur,” ‘Fables’
“Come quickly! I am tasting stars!” – Dom Perignon (1638-1714) at his first sip of champagne
“I have enjoyed great health at a great age because everyday since I can remember I have consumed a bottle of wine except when I have not felt well. Then I have consumed two bottles.” -A Bishop of Seville 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. – Lillie de Hergermann-Lindencrone, “In the Courts of Memory”
“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, “A Moveable Feast”
“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
“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 counsellor. 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”
“[Wine is] poetry in a bottle.” – Clifton Fadiman
“To take wine into your mouth is to savor a droplet of the river of human history.” – Clifton Fadiman, N. Y. Times, 8 Mar ’87
“A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover.” – Clifton Fadiman, N. Y. Times, 8 Mar ’87
“In wine there is truth.” – Pliny The Elder [A.D.23-79] “Natural History,” Book XIV, Sect. 141
“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.” – George Saintsbury [1845-1913] “Notes on a Cellar Book”
“There can be no bargain without wine.” – Latin saying
“I made wine out of raisins so I wouldn’t have to wait for it to age.” – Steven Wright
“Compromises are for relationships, not wine.” – Sir Robert Scott Caywood
“What contemptible scoundrel stole the cork from my lunch” W. C. Fields
Johann Wolfgang Goethe, a famous German poet, once was asked which three things he would take to an island. He stated: “Poetry, a beautiful woman and enough bottles of the world’s finest wines to survive this dry period!” Then he was asked what he would leave back first, if it was allowed to take only two things to the island. And he briefly replied: “The poetry!” Slightly surprised, the man asked the next question: “And Sir, what would you leave back if only one was allowed?” And Goethe thought for a couple of minutes and answered: “It depends on the vintage!”
To me there is no better gift
Than a fine old bottle of wine;
Like a trusted friend, it speaks for me,
But in a voice uniquely mine.
I’ll spread this cheer to all my friends,
And send them the gift of the vine;
And they in turn will share the joy–
It’s simple…at 800wine. – Anonymous 