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WINE FACTS

Q & A (part 1)
1. How many acres are planted to grapes worldwide?
2. Among the world's fruit crops, where do wine grapes rank in number of acres planted?
3. How many countries import California wines?
4. What was the primary fruit crop in Napa Valley during the 1940's?
5. How many gallons of wine were lost in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake?
6. When was phylloxera first discovered in California?
7. How many acres of Napa County vineyards have been replanted in the last 15 years because of phylloxera?
8. How many more acres of Napa County vineyards will need replacement?
9. How long does it take to harvest a commercial crop from newly replanted grape vines?
10. How many varieties of wine grapes exist worldwide?
11. How much does it cost per bottle to age wine in a French oak barrel?
12. How much does it cost per bottle to age wine in only new French oak barrels?
13. How much white zinfandel is consumed in this country?

Answers:
1) 20 million
2) #1
3) 164
4) Prunes
5) 30 million
6) August 19, 1873
7) 10,450
8) 4,450
9) 4-5 years
10) 10,000
11) 90 cents
12) $2.50
13) Too much!

Q & A (part 2)
1. When was the first known reference to a specific wine vintage?
2. How old was the wine being “reviewed”?
3. A bottle of opened wine stored in the refrigerator lasts how much longer than it would if stored at room temp?
4. How many oak species are there?
5. How many are used in making oak barrels?
6. What percent of an oak tree is suitable for making high grade wine barrels?
7. The 1996 grape crop in Napa Valley was down what percentage from normal?
8. What are the top three U.S. states in terms of wine consumption?
9. What percentage of legal-aged Americans contacted in a Nielson phone survey drink wine?
10. What percentage of restaurant wine sales do red wines represent?
11. What is the average cost of the grapes used to produce a $20 bottle of wine?

Answers:
1. Roman Historian Pliny the Elder rated 121 B.C. as a vintage “of the highest excellence.”
2. 200 years old! Pliny the Elder wrote the history of the Roman Empire around 70 A.D.
3. 6-16 times longer
4. 400
5. 20
6. 5%
7. 20-25%
8. CA, NY, FL
9. 58%
10. 55%
11. $2.64

MORE WINE FACTS

· Jefferson and wine: From Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, by Stephen E Ambrose, comes the following historical note. Jefferson took up residence in the President’s House in 1801, after his inauguration as the 3rd President of the United States.
“Jefferson ran the place with only eleven servants (Abigail Adams had needed 30!), brought up from Monticello. There were no more powdered wigs, much less ceremony. Washington and Adams, according to Republican critics, had kept up almost a royal court. Jefferson substituted Republican simplicity - to a point. He had a French chef, and French wines he personally selected. His salary was $25,000 per year - a princely sum, but the expenses were also great. In 1801 Jefferson spent $6500 for provisions and groceries, $2700 for servants (some of whom were liveried), $500 for Lewis’s salary, and $3,000 for wine.”

· Dom Perignon (1638-1715), the Benedictine Abbey (at Hautvillers) cellar master who is generally credited with “inventing” the Champagne making process, was blind.

Thomas Jefferson helped stock the wine cellars of the first five U.S. presidents and was very partial to fine Bordeaux and Madeira.

· To prevent a sparkling wine from foaming out of the glass, pour an ounce, which will settle quickly. Pouring the remainder of the serving into this starter will not foam as much.

· Old wine almost never turns to vinegar. It spoils by oxidation.

· U.S. 1998 sales of white and blush wines were 67% of total table wine sales. Red wines were 33% of sales. At Beekman’s, the best we can calculate (since we don’t track the color of wine sales from Chile, Australia or Spain or of jug wines) is that our sales of white and blush comprised only 45% of total wine sales. Reds accounted for 55%. That’s in dollars, not unit sales. American wines accounted for 47% of our wine sales vs. 53% for imported wines.

· In King Tut’s Egypt (around 1300 BC), the commoners drank beer and the upper class drank wine.

· According to local legend, the great French white Burgundy, Corton-Charlemagne, owes its existence, not to the emperor Charlemagne, but to his wife. The red wines of Corton stained his white beard so messily that she persuaded him to plant vines that would produce white wines. Charlemagne ordered white grapes to be planted. Thus: Corton-Charlemagne!

· When Leif Ericsson landed in North America in A.D. 1001, he was so impressed by the proliferation of grapevines that he named it Vinland.

· Cork was developed as a bottle closure in the late 17th century. It was only after this that bottles were lain down for aging, and the bottle shapes slowly changed from short and bulbous to tall and slender.

· Merlot was the “hot” varietal in 1999, but in 1949, the “darling of the California wine industry” was Muscatel!

· The Napa Valley crop described in 1889 newspapers as the finest of its kind grown in the U.S. was hops.

· When Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii in volcanic lava in A.D. 79, it also buried more than 200 wine bars.

· The “top five” chateau of Bordeaux, according to the 1855 Classification, were actually only four: Lafite-Rothschild, Latour, Margaux and Haut-Brion. In the only change to that historic classification, Mouton-Rothschild was added in 1973.

· Grapevines cannot reproduce reliably from seed. To cultivate a particular grape variety, grafting (a plant version of cloning) is used.

· Wine has so many organic chemical compounds it is considered more complex than blood serum.

· Wine grapes are subject to mold when there’s too much moisture. Tight clustered Sauvignon Blanc, Zinfandel and Pinot Noir are most susceptible to mold. The looser clusters of Cabernet Sauvignon allow for faster drying of moist grapes and thus make it less susceptible.

· In 1945, Chateau Mouton-Rothschild began a series of artists’ labels, hiring a different artist each year to design a unique label for that vintage. The artists have included such notables as Chagall, Picasso, Miro and Warhol. The 1993 label was sufficiently controversial in this country (the stylized juvenile nude on the label offended the Political Correctness Police) that the Chateau withdrew the label and substituted a blank label instead.

· It is the VERY slow interaction of oxygen and wine that produces the changes noticed in aging wine. It is believed that wine ages more slowly in larger bottles, since there is less oxygen per volume of wine in larger bottles. Rapid oxidation, as with a leaky cork, spoils wine.

· Before harvest, the canopy of leaves at the top of the vine is often cut away to increase exposure to the sun and speed ripening.

· The average age of a French oak tree harvested for use in wine barrels is 170 years!

· The lip of a red wine glass is sloped inward to capture the aromas of the wine and deliver them to your nose.

· “Cold maceration” means putting the grapes in a refrigerated environment for several days before starting fermentation to encourage color extraction. This is being done more and more frequently with Pinot Noir since the skins of this varietal don’t have as much pigmentation as other red varietals.

· Frenchman Georges de Latour came to America in the late 1800’s to prospect for gold. He didn’t find much gold, but he founded a truly golden winery: Beaulieu Vineyard.

· Mycoderma bacteria convert ethyl alcohol into acetic acid, thus turning wine into vinegar. However, most incidents of spoiled wine are due to air induced oxidation of the fruit, not bacterial conversion of alcohol to vinegar.

· The world’s most planted grape varietal is Airén. It occupies over 1 million acres in central Spain where it is made into mediocre white wine, but some quite good brandy.

· Bettino Ricasoli, founder of Brolio, is credited with having created the original recipe for Chianti, combining two red grapes (Sangiovese and Canaiolo) with two white grapes (Malvasia and Trebbiano). Today the better Chiantis have little or no white grapes in them and may contain some Cabernet. They are thus deeper in color and flavor and more age worthy.

· From 1970 until the late 1980s, sales and consumption of wine in the United States held a ratio of about 75% white to 25% red. At the turn of the Millennium, the ratio is closer to 50-50.

· In the year 2000, Americans spent $20 billion on wine. 72% of that was spent on California wines.

· In ancient Rome bits of toast were floated in goblets of wine. There is a story that a wealthy man threw a lavish party in which the public bath was filled with wine. Beautiful young women were invited to swim in it. When asked his opinion of the wine, one guest responded: “I like it very much, but I prefer the toast.” (referring, presumably, to the women)

· “Cuvée” means “vat” or “tank.” It is used to refer to a particular batch or blend.

· Beaujolais Nouveau cannot be legally released until the third Thursday of every November. The due date this year (2001) is November 15th.

· We’re seeing more and more synthetic corks these days, but the latest technology to prevent contaminated corks is the use of microwaves.

· Labels were first put on wine bottles in the early 1700s, but it wasn’t until the 1860s that suitable glues were developed to hold them on the bottles.

· Top Napa Valley vineyard land sells for over $100,000/acre!

In the year 2000, there were 847 wineries in California.

· Wine is often called the nectar of the gods, but Sangiovese is the only grape named after a god. Sangiovese means “blood of Jove.”

· Ninety-two percent of California wineries produce fewer than 100,000 cases per year. Sixty percent produce fewer than 25,000 cases.

· Egg whites, bull’s blood, and gelatin have all been used as fining agents to remove suspended particles from wine before bottling. Egg whites are still commonly used.

· “Brix” is the term used to designate the percentage of sugar in the grapes before fermentation. For example, 23° brix will be converted by yeast to 12.5% alcohol, more or less, depending on the conversion efficiency of the strain of yeast used.

· In describing wine, the term “hot” refers to a high level of alcohol, leaving an hot, sometimes burning sensation.

· In the production of port, the crushed grapes are fermented for about two days. Then the fermentation is halted by the addition of a neutral distilled spirit or brandy. This raises the alcohol level and retains some of the grapes’ natural sugar.

· American wine drinkers consume more wine on Thanksgiving than any other day of the year.

· As of 2000, 554,000 acres in California were planted to grapevines.

· “Still wine” does not come from a still. The phrase refers to wine without bubbles, which includes what is also referred to as table wine.

· Fiasco [fee-YAHS-koh]; pl. fiaschi [fee-YAHS-kee] - Italian for “flask.” The word is most often connected with the squat, round-bottomed, straw-covered bottle containing cheaper wine from the Chianti region. The straw covering not only helps the bottle sit upright, but protects the thin, fragile glass. Fiaschi are seldom seen today as the cost of hand-wrapping each flask for cheaper wines has become prohibitive, and the more expensive wines with aging potential need bottles that can be lain on their sides.

· As early as 4000 BC, the Egyptians were the first people to use corks as stoppers.

· The wine industry generates 145,000 jobs in California.

California has 847 wineries. Napa County is the home of 232 of them.

· Market research shows that most people buy a particular wine either because they recognize the brand name or they are attracted by the packaging. Not Beekman’s customers!

· Portugal has 1/3 of the world's cork forests and supplies 85-90% of the cork used in the U.S.

· There are only three legal categories of wine in the U.S.: table, dessert, and sparkling. In the early 1950s, 82% of the wine Americans drank was classified as dessert wines. These included Sherry, Port, and Madeira. I don’t have current national figures, but Beekman’s sales of wine today are 90% table wine, 7% sparkling wine, and only 3% dessert wine!

· Until 1970, Bordeaux produced more white wine than red. Today red wine represents about 84% of the total crop.

· California produces approximately 77% of the U.S. wine grape crop

· There is at least one commercial winery in every state of the United States, including Hawaii and Alaska!

· Putting ice and kosher salt in a bucket will chill white wine or Champagne faster.

· The most popular corkscrew, the wing-type, is cheap and easy to use, but it frequently mangles corks and leaves small pieces of cork in your wine. It also tends to pull out just the middle of an old, dry cork. Far superior are the Screwpull, which is also easy to use, and the waiter’s corkscrew, which requires just a little know-how to use effectively. No matter what type you use, you should also have a two-pronged (Ah-So) device to remove problem corks.

· Zinfandel first appeared in the United States in the 1820s when Long Island nursery owner George Gibbs imported several grape vines from the Imperial collection in Vienna. One of the vines was Zinfandel. (The current thinking is that Zinfandel originated in Croatia where it is called Plavac Mali.) In the 1850s, Zinfandel made its way to California.

· An Italian white wine called Est! Est! Est! got its name from a medieval story. A bishop was planning to travel the Italian countryside and asked his scout to find inns that had good wines, marking the door “Est” (“It is” or “This is it”) when he found one. The scout was so excited about the local wine found in the area that he marked one inn’s door “Est! Est! Est!” Another version of this story is that a priest was on his way to minister to a congregation in the boondocks. Upon discovering the wonderful local wine, he sent the message “Est! Est! Est!” back to Rome, renounced the priesthood, and spent the rest of his life enjoying the wine.

· The auger or curly metal part of a corkscrew is sometimes called a worm.

· Graves is thought to be the oldest wine region in Bordeaux.

· The Puritans loaded more beer than water onto the Mayflower.

· In terms of acreage, wine grapes rank #1 among all crops planted worldwide.

· Although “château” means castle, it may also be a mansion or a little house next to a vineyard that meets the requirements for winemaking with storage facilities on its property.

· Château Petrus is the most expensive of the Bordeaux wines. Its price is as much due to its tiny production as to its quality. Petrus is made from at least 95% Merlot grapes.

· The Egyptians were the first to make glass containers around 1500 B.C.E.

· The 1855 Classification of Médoc châteaux listed only the best properties. “Best” was defined as those properties whose wines were the most expensive. The top estates were then divided into five categories (the “growths”) based on price.

· Margaux is the largest of the Médoc appellations.

· Pomerol is the smallest Bordeaux appellation.

· “Grand Cru” is French for “great growth” and designates the best. In Burgundy it refers to the best vineyards which usually have multiple owners. In Bordeaux its meaning varies by the specific region, but it always refers to properties under a single ownership.

· Rose bushes are often planted at the end of a row of grape vines to act as an early warning signal for infestation by diseases and insects like aphids. A vineyard manager who notices black spots or root rot on the roses will spray the grape vines before they are damaged.

WINE QUOTES

· If all be true that I do think,
There are five reasons
we should drink:

Good wine -
A friend -
Or being dry -
Or lest we should be, by and by -
Or any other reason why!
- Henry Aldrich 1647-1710

· "Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy." --- Alexander Fleming (1881-1955), the Scottish bacteriologist credited with discovering Penicillin in 1928.

· "Wine is the most civilized thing in the world." --- Ernest Hemingway.

· "Wine improves with age. The older I get, the better I like it." --- Anonymous

"Compromises are for relationships, not wine." --- Sir Robert Scott Caywood

· "Beer is made by men, wine by God!" --- Martin Luther

· "Drinking good wine with good food in good company is one of life's most civilized pleasures."--- Michael Broadbent

· "Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance." --- Benjamin Franklin

· [at his first sip of champagne] "Come quickly! I am tasting stars!" --- Dom Perignon

· "Men are like wine - some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age." --- Pope John XXIII

· "Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that 'age appears to be best in four things - old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.'" --- Francis Bacon, 1624

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

· "Wine is life." --- Petronius, Roman writer

· "He who aspires to be a serious wine drinker must drink claret." (“claret” is the British term for red Bordeaux) --- Samuel Johnson

· "Nothing makes the future look so rosy as to contemplate it through a glass of Chambertin." --- Napoleon

· "No nation is drunken where wine is cheap, and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage." --- Thomas Jefferson

· "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

"Life is too short to drink bad wine." --- Anonymous

· "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

· "Wine cheers the sad, revives the old, inspires the young, makes weariness forget his toil." --- Lord Byron

· "I love everything that’s old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine." --- Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer

· "Wine … offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than possibly any other purely sensory thing which may be purchased." --- Ernest Hemingway

· "My only regret in life is that I did not drink more Champagne." --- John Maynard Keynes

· "[Making wine] is like having children; you love them all, but boy, are they different." --- Bunny Finkelstein ( co-owner of Judd’s Hill Winery)

"Wine... the intellectual part of the meal." --- Alexandre Dumas, 1873

· "Wine brings to light the hidden secrets of the soul, gives being to our hopes, bids the coward flight, drives dull care away, and teaches new means for the accomplishment of our wishes." --- Horace

· "And wine can of their wits the wise beguile, make the sage frolic, and the serious smile." --- Alexander Pope

· "A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover." --- Clifton Fadiman

· When it comes to wine, I tell people to throw away the vintage charts and invest in a corkscrew. The best way to learn about wine is the drinking. --- Alexis Lichine

· "If food is the body of good living, wine is its soul." --- Clifton Fadiman

· "And Noah began to be a husbandman, and he planted a vineyard." --- Genesis 9:20

·                   "So life’s year begins and closes;
              Days though shortening still can shine;
           What though youth gave love and roses;
              Age still leaves us friends and wine."
                                   ---Thomas Moore

· "A bottle of good wine, like a good act, shines ever in the retrospect" --- Robert Louis Stevenson

· The first written reference to Champagne was English, not French! In 1676, Etherege wrote in praise of “sparkling Champagne” which “Quickly recovers / Poor laughing lovers, / Makes us frolic and gay, / and drowns all our sorrows.” The use of the adjective “sparkling” implies that some time prior to this the wines of the Champagne district were not necessarily sparkling.

· "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." --- Attributed to a Bishop of Seville

·                   "The wine-cup is the little silver well,
              Where truth, if truth there be, doth dwell."
                                  --- William Shakespeare

· "It takes a lot of beer to make good wine." --- Lou Preston, Preston Vineyards

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

· "I serve your Beaune to my friends, but your Volnay I keep for myself." --- Voltaire

· When asked whether he ever confused a Bordeaux with a Burgundy in a blind tasting, British wine legend Harry Waugh replied: "Not since lunch."

· "Within the bottle’s depths, the wine’s soul sang one night. --- Charles Baudelaire, French poet and critic

· "My dear girl, there are some things that are just not done, such as drinking Dom Perignon ‘53 above the temperature of 38° Fahrenheit." --- James Bond in Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger

· "Wine rejoices the heart of man and joy is the mother of all virtues" --- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1771

· "Wine is at the head of all medicines; where wine is lacking, drugs are necessary." - Babylonian Talmud: Baba Bathra

· "Forsake not an old friend; for the new is not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine; when it is old, thou shalt drink it with pleasure." --- Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus 9:10

· "During one of my treks through Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew. We were compelled to live on food and water for several days." --- Cuthbert J. Twillie (W.C. Fields) in My Little Chickadee, 1940

· A man, fallen on hard times, sold his art collection but kept his wine cellar. When asked why he did not sell his wine, he said, “A man can live without art, but not without culture.” --- Anonymous

· “I can certainly see you know your wine. Most of the guests who stay here wouldn’t know the difference between Bordeaux and Claret.” --- Basil Fawlty (John Cleese) in Fawlty Towers [“Claret” is an English term for red Bordeaux.]

· “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

· “Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance." --- Attributed to Benjamin Franklin

· “In the order named, these are the hardest to control: Wine, Women, and Song.” --- Franklin P. Adams, The Ancient Three. Dictionary of Quotations, Bergen Evans, 1968.

· Bessie Braddock, a well-known socialist in England, attended a dinner party at which she was seated next to Winston Churchill who had had quite a bit to drink. She said to him, “Winston, you are drunk!” He replied, “Madame, I may be drunk, but you are ugly, and tomorrow I will be sober.”

· “Never buy the cheapest wine in any category, as its taste may discourage you from going on. The glass, corks, cartons, and labor are about the same for any wine, as are the ocean freight and taxes for imported wines. Consequently, if you spend a little more, you are likely to get a better wine, because the other costs remain fixed. Cheap wine will always be too expensive.” --- Alex Bespaloff, New Signet Book of Wine, 1986

· Before leaving home to serve a one year jail sentence, a “white collar” criminal was quoted as saying, “I’m not worried about the reds; they’ll keep OK. But I am worried about the whites.” --- Anonymous.

· “The peoples of the Mediterranean began to emerge from barbarism when they learnt to cultivate the olive and the vine.” --- Thucydides, Greek Historian, 5th century BCE.

· “The last time that I trusted a dame was in Paris in 1940. She was going out to get a bottle of wine. Two hours later, the Germans marched into France.” --- Sam Diamond in Murder by Death (1976)

· The importance of wine shows up early in the Bible: “And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard.” --- Genesis 9:20.

· “I made a mental note to watch which bottle became empty soonest, sometimes a more telling evaluation system than any other." --- Gerald Asher, On Wine, 1982

· "Anyone who tries to make you believe that he knows all about wines is obviously a fake.” --- Leon Adams, The Commonsense Book of Wine

· “Premier Cru” vineyards in Burgundy are those that are considered significantly better than the basic village wines. These vineyards are generally better situated in terms of slope, direction,and soil. Their wines get riper and give wines of greater character and depth.

· “No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, ‘The old is better.’” --- Luke 5:39

· “This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don’t want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. You lose the taste.” --- Count Mippipopolous in The Sun Also Rises, 1926, by Ernest Hemingway

· “What contemptible scoundrel stole the cork from my lunch?” --- Larson E. Whipsnade (W.C. Fields), You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1939)

· “Great news!” she said after speaking to our doctor. “I have it on the highest medical authority that you will still be alive in 10 years! You know what this means?” she asked. “Of course I know what it means,” I replied. “It means we don’t have to drink up all our 1985 and 1986 Château Latour at supper tonight for fear I might die with several outrageously priced wines undrunk. For the first time in years, we can go to bed sober.” --- based on Russell Baker, New York Times, 12 May 1990.

· “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.” --- Attributed to the late Julia Child.

· Filmmaker and winemaker Francis Ford Coppola says, “The two professions are almost the same. Each depends on source material and takes a lot of time to perfect. The big difference is that today’s winemakers still worry about quality.”

· Hardly did it appear, than from my mouth it passed into my heart.” -- Abbe de Challieu, 1715, upon first tasting Champagne.

· “Between 5/22/85 and 5/4/88, the French writer Jean-Paul Kauffmann was held chained and often blindfolded in a Beirut basement [by a] Shiite Muslim fundamentalist group. A lover of Bordeaux, Mr. Kauffmann recited daily the list of the 61 greatest chateaux drawn up in 1855. He strove to conjure up the aroma of a Chateau Margaux or a Leoville-Poyferre. Occasionally a small miracle would occur, and the scent of black currants and plum would permeate the dusty heat of Lebanon.” --- Roger Cohen, “Ways of Doing Time,” New York Times, 5/4/97.

· “I know never to take a wine for granted. Drawing a cork is like attendance at a concert or at a play that one knows well, when there is all the uncertainty of no two performances ever being quite the same. That is why the French say, ‘There are no good wines, only good bottles.’” --- Gerald Asher, On Wine, 1982.

· “When men drink, then they are rich and successful and win lawsuits and are happy and help their friends. Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.” --- Aristophanes, The Knights, 424 B. C. E.

· “She gets to keep the chalet and the Rolls, I want the Montrachet.” --- Anonymous, Forbes Magazine, May 6, 1996.

· “One should write not unskillfully in the running hand, be able to sing in a pleasing voice, and keep good time to music; and, lastly, a man should not refuse a little wine when it is pressed upon him.” --- Yoshida Kenko, Essays in Idleness, c. 1340

· “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.’” --- Attributed to Isadora Duncan

· “Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say it makes him more pleasing to others.” --- Samuel Johnson, April 28, 1778

· “That winter two things happened which made me see that the world, the flesh, and the devil were going to be more powerful influences in my life after all than the chapel bell. First, I tasted champagne; second, the theater.” --- Belle Livingstone

· “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.” -- Charles Caleb Colton

· 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. --- The Official Guide to Wine Snobbery, Leonard S. Bernstein, 1982.

· “There are many wines that taste great, but do not drink well.” --- Michael Broadbent.

· In response to a waiter who had offered him a Bromo Seltzer for a hangover, “Ye Gads, no! I couldn’t stand the noise.” --- W.C. Fields

· “Twas Noah who first planted the vine
And mended his morals by drinking its wine.” --- Attributed to Benjamin Franklin

· “In victory, you deserve champagne; in defeat, you need it.” --- Many sources, including Kevin Zraly, Windows on the World Complete Wine Course, 1997.

· "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

LIFE QUOTES

· “What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce.” --- Mark Twain

· “The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible.” --- George Burns

· “Don’t worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older, it will avoid you.” --- Winston Churchill

· “Good judgment comes from bad experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.” --- Anonymous

· "Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it."

· “If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.” --- Anonymous

· “If you don’t think too good, don’t think too much.” --- attributed to Ted Williams by Tom & Ray Magliozzi of Car Talk.

· What if there were no hypothetical questions?

· I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, “Where’s the self-help section?” She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

· Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

· "Money can’t buy you happiness, but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery." --- Spike Milligan

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