Finding fun quotations about wine is easy, like looking for hay in a haystack. Wineries have them on their notice boards. Cocktail napkins with wine witticisms abound. On a more serious note, many classic authors have also written about wine. Let’s start with William Shakespeare (“sack” corresponds to modern sherry):
- “Wine cheers the sad, revives the old, inspires the young and makes weariness forget his toil.” (Merry Wives of Windsor)
- “If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle I would teach them should be, to forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack.” (Henry IV)
- “Good company, good wine, good welcome, can make good people.” (Henry VIII)
- “A man cannot make him laugh – but that’s no marvel; he drinks no wine.” (Henry IV)
- “What three things does drink especially provoke? Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance.” (Macbeth)
Shakespeare was not alone in generating some great quotations about wine, and featuring characters who loved their wine. Here are quotes from some other great authors; it’s no accident that several are French, since the French may have had the most practice at drinking wine:
- “Ah, bouteille, ma vie, pourquoi vous videz-vous?” (Moliere) Translated “Oh bottle, my life, why do you empty yourself?”
- “One should always be drunk. That’s all that matters .. But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose. But get drunk.” (Charles Baudelaire)
- “In vino, veritas.” (Pliny the Elder). Translation: “In wine, there is truth.”
- “La vie est trop court pour boire du mauvais vin.” (French proverb). Translation “Life is too short to drink bad wine.” The Wine Guys say “Amen”
- “Wine is bottled poetry.” (Robert Louis Stevenson)
- “Age is just a number. It’s totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine.” (Joan Collins)
Other famous people also needed to make their opinions on wine heard:
- “Men are like wine – some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age.” (Pope John XXIII)
- “Beer is made by men, wine by God.” (Martin Luther)
- “Wine is sunlight held together with water.” (Galileo Galilei).
- “In victory, you deserve Champagne; in defeat, you need it.” (Napoleon Bonaparte)
- “It was the most delightful wine when drunk in moderation, but that more than a few glasses always produced a headache the next day.” (James Madison)
- “This being a very favorite wine, and habit having rendered the light and high flavored wines a necessity of life with me.” (Thomas Jefferson)
- “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)
- “I have lived temperately … I double the doctor’s recommendation of a glass and a half each day, and even treble it with a friend.” (Thomas Jefferson)
- “In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria.” (Benjamin Franklin).
- “Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy.” (Benjamin Franklin)
To the humorists go the last word:
- “I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.” (W. C. Fields, also Julia Child)
- “I can certainly see that you know your wine. Most of the guests who stay here wouldn’t know the difference between Bordeaux and Claret.” (Basil Fawlty, Fawlty Towers).
- “What wine goes with Cap’n Crunch?” (George Carlin)
Cheers!
-Submitted by Guy Gimson
(Image credit: Pixabay.com)