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Wines

Remember gentlemen, it's not just France we are fighting for, it's Champagne!

Winston S Churchill, 1918

"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut."

Ernest Hemmingway

"A woman drove me to drink and I didn't even have the decency to thank her."

W.C. Fields

"I drink champagne when I'm happy and when I'm sad. Sometimes I drink it when I'm alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I'm not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it - unless I'm thirsty."

Madam Lilly Bollinger

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

Napoleon Bonaparte

"To get the full value of joy, you must have someone to divide it with."

Mark Twain

"To temperance . . . in moderation".

Lem Motlow

"Wine improves with age - I like it the older I get".

Unknown

"May you live as long as you want…And may you never want as long as you live."

Unknown

"Here's hoping that you live forever…And mine is the last voice you hear."

Willard Scott

Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities.

Timothy 5:23

And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess...

Ephesians 5:18a

For a bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God; not selfwilled, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre;

Titus 1:7

For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red.

Psalms 75:8

If God forbade drinking, would He have made wine so good?

Cardinal Richelieu (Mirame)

Macduff: What three things does drink especially provoke?

Porter: Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance.

Macbeth, II, iii Shakespeare

Appreciating old wine is like making love to a very old lady. It is possible. It can even be enjoyable. But it requires a bit of imagination.

Andre Tchelistcheff

If you wish to grow thinner, diminish your dinner,

And take to light claret instead of pale ale.

Henry Leigh, Carols of Cocayne, "On Corpulence"

Drink a glass of wine after your soup and you steal a ruble from your doctor.

Russian proverb

If we sip the wine, we find dreams coming upon us
Out of the imminent night

D.H. Lawrence, "Grapes"

JAMAIS EN VAIN,
TOUJOURS EN VIN

Saying posted in the hall at Clos Vougeot, Burgundy
(Translation: "Never in vain, always in wine," but the rhyme is lost in English)

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.

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961), Count Mippipopolous, in The Sun Also Rises (1926).

"You have only so many bottles in your life, never drink a bad one."

Len Evans

"I drank a bottle of wine for company. It was Chateau Margaux. It was pleasant to be drinking slowly and to be tasting the wine and to be drinking alone. A bottle of wine was good company."

Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows.

George Bernard Shaw On wine.

"So far as drinking is concerned, you have my hearty approval; for wine does of a truth moisten the soul and lull our griefs to sleep....[and with small cups] we shall ...be brought by its gentle persuasion to a more sportive mood."

Xenophon, quoting Socrates

Wine is the "healthiest and most health-giving of drinks."

Louis Pasteur

It fills one's mouth with a gushing freshness--then goes down cool and feverless--then you do not feel it quarrelling with your liver--no, it is rather a peacemaker, and it lies as quiet as it did in the grape; then it is as fragrant as the queen bee, and the more ethereal part of it mounts into the brain...like Aladdin about his enchanted palace so gently that you do not feel his step.

John Keats, 1819, on claret

It had the taste of an apple peeled with a steel knife.

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963),Sebastian Barnack, in Time Must Have a Stop, ch 12 (1944), assessing a Roederer 1916 champagne.

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), dean of Christ Church, Oxford. Reasons For Drinking.

Wine makes every meal an occasion, every table more elegant, every day more civilized.

Andre Simon, "Commonsense of Wine

Wine ...moderately drunken
It doth quicken a man's wits,
It doth comfort the heart.

Andrew Boorde, 1562, "Dyetary of Helth"

..Hermippus...[Old Greek poet] puts into the mouth of Dionysus a description of just such a wine as that Chateau Margaux 1871. 'But there is a wine which they call "the mellow," and from the mouth of its jar as it is opened, there comes a fragrance of violets, a fragrance of roses, a fragrance of hyacinth. A divine perfume pervades the high-roofed house, ambrosia and nectar in one." As the last drops of the Margaux were being sipped, a guest savouring preciously every fragrance, said with unaffected humility: "When I drink wines such as these, I ask myself what merit I have acquired that I should be allowed to experience such beauty."

H. Warner Allen, "The Romance of Wine"

"Wine in California is still in the experimental stage; and when you taste a vintage, grave economical questions are involved. The beginning of vine-planting is like the beginning of mining for the precious metals: the wine-grower also "prospects." One corner of land after another is tried with one kind of grape after another. This is a failure; that is better; third is best. So, bit by bit, they grope about for their Clos Vougeot and Lafite. Those lodes and pockets of earth, more precious than the precious ores, that yield inimitable fragrance and soft fire, those virtuous Bonanzas where the soil has sublimated under sun and stars to something finer, and the wine is bottled poetry."

Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Silverado Squatters"

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

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

"I have often thought that the aim of port is to give you a good and durable hangover, so that during the next day you should be reminded of the splendid occasion the night before."

George Mikes

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

"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"

"....I loved the [story] about how a great wine connoisseur invited the composer [Brahms] to dinner. 'This is the Brahms of my cellar,' he said to his guests, producing a dust-covered bottle and pouring some onto the master's glass. Brahms looked first at the color of the wine, then sniffed its bouquet, finally took a sip, and put the glass down without saying a word. 'Hmmm,' Brahms muttered. 'Better bring your Beethoven!' "

Artur Rubinstein, "My Young Years"

Burgundies, on the whole, do not keep nearly so long as Clarets; they have more to give, more bouquet and greater vinosity, at first, but they exhaust themselves and fade away sooner than the less aromatic, more reserved Clarets. It is somewhat like some of the carnations, which possess a far more pungent and assertive perfume, when first picked, than any rose; yet the more discreet, the gentler and sweeter perfume of the rose will abide with the bloom as long as the bloom will last.

Andre L. Simon

"The discovery of a wine is of greater moment than the discovery of a constellation. The universe is too full of stars."

Benjamin Franklin

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.

Saki [H. H. Munro] (1870–1916), . Clovis, in "The Match-Maker," published in The Chronicles of Clovis (1911).

Mr. Edward Carson, QC:Do you drink champagne yourself?
Mr. Oscar Wilde:Yes; iced champagne is a favourite drink of mine— strongly against my doctor’s orders.
Mr. Edward Carson, QC:Never mind your doctor’s orders, sir!
Mr. Oscar Wilde: I never do.

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), Exchange, 4 April 1895, during Wilde’s prosecution of the Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel, Regina (Wilde) v. Queensberry.

Fermented beverages have been preferred over water throughout the ages: they are safer, provide psychotropic effects, and are more nutritious. Some have even said alcohol was the primary agent for the development of Western civilization, since more healthy individuals (even if inebriated much of the time) lived longer and had greater reproductive success.

Dr. Patrick McGovern, et al.
The Origins & Ancient History of Wine

Wine has been to me a firm friend and a wise counsellor. ...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 do them....[I]f such small indiscretions standing in the debit column of wine's account were added up, they would amount to nothing in comparison with the vast accumulation on the credit side.

DUFF COOPER, "Old Men Forget"

"If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don't actually live longer; it just seems longer."

Clement Freud.

"I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me."

Winston Churchill.

"'twas a woman who drove me to drink, and I never had the courtesy to thank her for it."

W. C. Fields.

"When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading."

Henny Youngman.

"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut."

Ernest Hemingway

"The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind."

Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957)

"There are two reasons for drinking: one is, when you are thirsty, to cure it; the other when you are thirsty, to prevent it....Prevention is better than cure."

Thomas Love Peacock (English author) (1785-1866)

"Wine is sunlight, held together by water."

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

"What I like to drink most is wine that belongs to others."

Diogenes , 320 BC, Greek philosopher

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

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

"Wine is the most healthful and most hygienic of beverages."

Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)

“Wine is bottled poetry.”

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

"A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine."

Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste (1825)

"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 (1755-1826) The Physiology of Taste

"Wine gives great pleasure, and every pleasure is of itself a good."

Samuel Johnson (1778) Boswell's "Life of Johnson"

"Wine makes a symphony of a good meal."

Fernande Garvin, The Art of French Cooking

"Wine is sure proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."

Benjamin Franklin

"Between each wine and each dish one should drink a mouthful of pure fresh water, preferably not (or only slightly) aerated."

Paul Ramain (1895-1966), French doctor.

"the road to great wine is littered with beer bottles"

Unknown

“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'

"An aged Burgundy runs with a beardless Port. I cherish the fancy that Port speaks sentences of wisdom, Burgundy sings the inspired Ode."

Ambrose Bierce, American writer (1842-1914)

"The vine bears three kinds of grapes: the first of pleasure, the second of intoxication, the third of disgust."

Anacharsis, Scythian philosopher (6th century B.C.)

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

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

"Before Noah, men having only water to drink, could not find the truth. Accordingly...they became abominably wicked, and they were justly exterminated by the water they loved to drink. This good man, Noah, having seen that all his contemporaries had perished by this unpleasant drink, took a dislike to it; and God, to relieve his dryness, created the vine and revealed to him the art of making le vin. By the aid of this liquid he unveiled more and more truth."

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

"Take counsel in wine, but resolve afterwards in water."

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

"For a gourmet wine is not a drink but a condiment, provided that your host has chosen correctly."

Edouard De Pomaine, French author

"The dipsomaniac and the abstainer are not only both mistaken, but they both make the same mistake. They both regard wine as a drug and not as a drink."

G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"Wine is grape juice. Every drop of liquid filling so many bottles has been drawn out of the ground by the roots of the vine."

Hugh Johnson, wine book author

"Wine is the pleasantest subject in the world to discuss. All its associations are with occasions when people are at their best; with relaxation, contentment, leisurely meals and the free flow of ideas."

Hugh Johnson, wine book author

"How I like claret!...It fills one's mouth with a gushing freshness, then goes down to cool and feverless; then, you do not feel it quarrelling with one's liver. No; 'tis rather a peace-maker, and lies as quiet as it did in the grape. Then it is as fragrant as the Queen Bee, and the more ethereal part mounts into the brain, not assaulting the cerebral apartments, like a bully looking for his trull, and hurrying from door to door, bouncing against the wainscott, but rather walks like Aladdin about his enchanted palace, so gently that you do not feel his step."

John Keats (1795-1821)

"This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk."

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

"'Have some wine,' the March Hare said in an encouraging tone. Alice looked around the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. 'I don't see any wine,' she remarked. 'There isn't any,' said the March Hare."

Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) (1832-1898)

"Wine is a precarious aphrodisiac, and its fumes have blighted many a mating."

Norman Douglas, English writer (1868-1952)

"Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. This is one of the disadvantages of wine: it makes a man mistake words for thoughts."

Samuel Johnson, English writer, lexicographer, critic and conversationalist (1709-1784)

"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 (1771-1832)

"Wine has a drastic, an astringent taste. I cannot help wincing as I drink. Ascent of flowers, radiance and heat, are distilled here to a fiery, yellow liquid. Just behind my shoulder-blades some dry thing, wide-eyed, gently closes, gradually lulls itself to sleep. This is rapture. This is relief."

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

"The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest."

William Blake (1757-1827)

“WINE, n. Fermented grape-juice known to the Women's Christian Union as 'liquor,' sometimes as 'rum.' Wine, madam, is God's next best gift to man.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) 'The Devil's Dictionary' (1911)

“To make white wine out of red wine. Put bean-meal or three egg whites into the flask and stir for a very long time. The next day the wine will be white. The ashes of white grape vines have the same effect.”

Apicius

“On one occasion some one put a very little wine into a [glass], and said that it was sixteen years old. 'It is very small for its age,' said Gnathaena.”

Athenaeus, 'The Deipnosophists' (c. A.D. 200)

“We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana as of a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, and which incorporates itself with the grapes, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

“Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.”

Bible, Proverbs 31:6-7

“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

“What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning with infininite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine?"

Isak Dineson, Danish author (1885-1962)

“French wines may be said but to pickle meat in the stomach, but this is the wine that digests, and doth not only breed good blood, but it nutrifieth also, being a glutinous substantial liquor; of this wine, if of any other, may be verified that merry induction: That good wine makes good blood, good blood causeth good humors, good humors cause good thoughts, good thoughts bring forth good works, good works carry a man to heaven, ergo, good wine carrieth a man to heaven.”

James Howell (1594-1666)

“Wine is the drink of the gods, milk the drink of babes, tea the drink of women, and water the drink of beasts."

John Stuart Blackie (1809-1895)

“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 (1912-2004)

“’Tis pity wine should be so deleterious,
For tea and coffee leave us much more serious.”

Lord Byron (1788-1824)

“Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence"

Robert Fripp, guitarist and cofounder of the band King Crimson (1969)

“Wine makes a man more pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others.”

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)Boswell's "Life of Johnson"

“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 (3rd President of U.S.)

“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 (3rd President of U.S.)

“To buy very good wine nowadays requires only money. To serve it to your guests is a sign of fatigue.”

William F. Buckley in Harpers Bazaar (September, 1979)

“Good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used.”

William Shakespeare

“In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.”

David Auerbach

“If wine disappeared from human production, I believe there would be, in the health and intellect of the planet, a void, a deficiency far more terrible than all the excesses and deviations for which wine is made responsible. Is it not reasonable to suggest that people that never drink wine, whether naive or doctrinaire, are fools or hypocrites....?”

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), French poet

“Drink is in itself a good creature of God, and to be received with thankfulness, but the abuse of drink is from Satan, the wine is from God, but the Drunkard is from the Devil.”

Increase Mather (1639-1723), Boston minister and educator.

“Place a substantial meal before a tired man and he will eat with effort and be little better for it at first. Give him a glass of wine or brandy, and immediately he feels better: you see him come to life again before you.”

Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826)

“The wine had such ill effects on Noah's health that it was all he could do to live 950 years. Just nineteen years short of Methuselah. Show me a total abstainer that ever lived that long.”

Will Rogers (1879-1935)

“Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at, and I sigh.”

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) Irish dramatist, poet.

“When you ask one friend to dine,
Give him you best wine!
When you ask two,
The second best will do!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet (1807-1882)

“Wine is earth's answer to the sun.”

Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)

“If wine tells truth -- and so have said the wise,
It makes me laugh to think how brandy lies!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-94) U.S. writer, physician

“In vino veritas.” (In wine there is truth.)

Pliny, Roman naturalist (A.D. 23-79)

“Wine is bottled poetry.”

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

“A fruit is a vegetable with looks and money. Plus, if you let fruit rot, it turns into wine, something Brussels sprouts never do.”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947 - )

“Wine is the intellectual part of a meal while meat is the material.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870)

“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 (1877-1970)

“To be always intending to live a new life, but never find time to set about it -- this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking from one day to another till he be starved and destroyed.”

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)

"I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well made."

James Bond, 'Casino Royale'

"I envy people who drink. At least they have something to blame everything on."

Oscar Levant

"An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do."

Dylan Thomas

"Not all men who drink are poets. Some of us drink because we aren't poets."

unknown

"I am as drunk as a lord, but then, I am one, so what does it matter?"

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why; Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where."

Omar Khayyam (1048-1131 A.D.)

"I don't drink; I don't like it -- it makes me feel good."

Oscar Levant

"The man that isn't jolly after drinking
Is just a drivelling idiot, to my thinking."

Euripedes (480-406 B.C.)

"Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable."

G.K. Chesterton(1874-1936)

"Now is the time for drinking, now is the time to beat the earth with unfettered foot."

Horace, Roman lyric poet (65 -8 B.C.)

"Drinking is in reality an occupation which employs a considerable portion of the time of many people; and to conduct it in the most rational and agreeable manner is one of the great arts of living."

James Boswell (1740-1795)

"There are two reasons for drinking: one is, when you are thirsty, to cure it; the other when you are thirsty, to prevent it....Prevention is better than cure."

Thomas Love Peacock (English author) (1785-1866)

“Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.”

Bible, Proverbs 31:6-7

“Drink to nobody that you think is better than yourself.”

Hannah Woolley, 17th-century etiquette expert, 'Guide to ladies, gentlewomen and maids'

“I love drinking now and then. It defecates the standing pool of thought. A man perpetually in the paroxysm and fears of inebriety is like a half-drowned stupid wretch condemned to labor unceasingly in water; but a now-and-then tribute to Bacchus is like the cold bath, bracing and invigorating.”

Robert Burns (1759-1796) Scottish Poet

“One of the saddest things is that the only thing a man can do for eight hours, is work. You can't eat eight hours a day, nor drink for eight hours a day, nor make love for eight hours.”

William Faulkner (1897-1962) American writer.

“He that eateth well drinketh well,
he that drinketh well sleepeth well,
he that sleepeth well sinneth not,
he that sinneth not goeth straight through Purgatory to Paradise.”

William Lithgow (1582-1645) Scottish traveler and author

“Without the assistance of eating and drinking, the most sparkling wit would be as heavy as a bad souffle, and the brightest talent as dull as a looking-glass on a foggy day.”

Alexis Soyer 19th century French chef, The Modern Housewife (1851)

“Skiing consists of wearing $3,000 worth of clothes and equipment and driving 200 miles in the snow in order to stand around at a bar and drink.”

P.G. Wodehouse

“Eat not to dullness, drink not to elevation.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

BEER

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."

Benjamin Franklin, (1706-1790).

"It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects, and the amount of money that goes out of the country as a consequence. Everybody is using coffee; this must be prevented. His Majesty was brought up on beer, and so were both his ancestors and officers. Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer, and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be relied upon to endure hardships in case of another war."

Frederick the Great of Prussia (1777), from Scientific American, June 1998.

"He was a wise man who invented beer."

Plato (Greek philosopher) 428- 347 BC

"What two ideas are more inseparable than Beer and Britannia?"
Sydney Smith (1771-1845) English writer and Anglican clergyman, quoted in

Hesketh Pearson's 'The Smith of Smiths'

"Beer: Take pure spring water. The finest grains. The richest ingredients. And then run them through a horse."

unknown

"Milk is for babies. When you grow up you have to drink beer."

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1975)

"You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer."

Frank Zappa

"Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza."

Dave Barry

"Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer."

Dave Barry

"People who drink light "beer" don't like the taste of beer; they just like to pee a lot."

Capital Brewery, Middleton, WI.

"I'm only a beer teetotaller, not a champagne teetotaller."

George Bernard Shaw

"Those who drink beer will think beer."

Washington Irving, American author (1783-1859)

"Most people hate the taste of beer - to begin with. It is, however, a prejudice that many people have been able to overcome."

Winston Churchill

“Some people wanted champagne and caviar when they should have had beer and hot dogs.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969)

“In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.”

David Auerbach (2002)

“Now Christmas comes, 'tis fit that we
should feast and sing, and merry be:
Keep open house, let fidlers play.
A fig for cold, sing care away;
And may they who thereat repine,
On brown bread and on small beer dine.”

from the 1766 Virginia Almanack

"Champagne has the taste of an apple peeled with a steel knife."

Aldous Huxley, British writer (1894-1963)

"There comes a time in every woman's life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne."

Bette Davis in Old Acquaintance

"Burgundy makes you think of silly things; Bordeaux makes you talk about them, and Champagne makes you do them."

Brillat-Savarin

"Come quickly, I am tasting the stars!"

Dom Perignon, at the moment he discovered champagne

“We lived very simply - but with all the essentials of life well understood and provided for - hot baths, cold champagne, new peas and old brandy.”

Winston Churchill, 'The Last Lion' by William Manchester (1993)

"I'm only a beer teetotaller, not a champagne teetotaller."

George Bernard Shaw

"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 - the food of Aphrodite.""

Isadora Duncan, American dancer (1878-1927)

"Champagne's funny stuff. I'm used to whiskey. Whiskey is a slap on the back, and champagne's a heavy mist before my eyes."

Jimmy Stewart, The Philadelphia Story

"Champagne and orange juice is a great drink. The orange improves the champagne. The champagne definitely improves the orange."

Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

“In victory, you deserve Champagne, in defeat, you need it.”

Napoleon Bonaparte

“Some people wanted champagne and caviar when they should have had beer and hot dogs.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969)

“My only regret in life is that I did not drink more Champagne”

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)

“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, French writer (1868-1955)

“A single glass of champagne imparts a feeling of exhilaration. The nerves are braced, the imagination is agreeably stirred; the wits become more nimble. A bottle produces the contrary effect. Excess causes a comatose insensibility. So it is with war: and the quality of both is best discovered by sipping.”

Winston Churchill (1871-1947) The Wit of Sir Winston (1965)

“Champagne does have one regular drawback: swilled as a regular thing a certain sourness settles in the tummy, and the result is permanent bad breath. Really incurable.”

Truman Capote, 'Answered Prayers' (1975)

“No government could survive without champagne. Champagne in the throats of our diplomatic people is like oil in the wheels of an engine.”

Joseph Dargent, French Vintner (1955)

"If you mean the demon drink that poisons the mind, pollutes the body, desecrates family life, and inflames sinners, then I'm against it. But if you mean the elixir of Christmas cheer, the shield against winter chill, the taxable potion that puts needed funds into public coffers to comfort little crippled children, then I'm for it. This is my position, and I will not compromise!"

A Congressman's attitude on whiskey

"Give an Irishman lager for a month, and he's a dead man. An Irishman is lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it. But whiskey polishes the copper and is the saving of him."

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

"Anybody who hates dogs and loves whiskey can't be all bad."

W.C. Fields (1880-1946)

"Always carry a large flagon of whisky in case of snakebite and furthermore always carry a small snake."

W.C. Fields (1880-1946)

“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947 - )

“Champagne's funny stuff. I'm used to whiskey. Whiskey is a slap on the back, and champagne's a heavy mist before my eyes.”

Jimmy Stewart, The Philadelphia Story

"Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy."

Samuel Johnson, Quoted in James Boswell's 'Life of Samuel Johnson'

"All alcoholic drinks, rightly used, are good for body and soul alike, but as a restorative of both there is nothing like brandy."

George Saintsbury, English journalist (1845-1933)

Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826)

“If wine tells truth -- and so have said the wise, --
It makes me laugh to think how brandy lies!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-94) U.S. writer, physician

"How I like claret!...It fills one's mouth with a gushing freshness, then goes down to cool and feverless; then, you do not feel it quarreling with one's liver. No; 'tis rather a peace-maker, and lies as quiet as it did in the grape. Then it is as fragrant as the Queen Bee, and the more ethereal part mounts into the brain, not assaulting the cerebral apartments, like a bully looking for his trull, and hurrying from door to door, bouncing against the wainscott, but rather walks like Aladdin about his enchanted palace, so gently that you do not feel his step."

John Keats (1795-1821)

“At that comfortable tavern on Pontchartrain we had a bouillabaisse than which a better was never eaten at Marseilles; and not the least headache in the morning, I give you my word; on the contrary, you only wake with a sweet refreshing thirst for claret and water.”

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)

“Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain,
With grammar, and nonsense, and learning;
Good liquor, I stoutly maintain,
Gives genius better discerning.”

Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774) English author and eccentric.

"An aged Burgundy runs with a beardless Port. I cherish the fancy that Port speaks sentences of wisdom, Burgundy sings the inspired Ode."

Ambrose Bierce, American writer (1842-1914)

“Burgundy makes you think of silly things; Bordeaux makes you talk about them, and Champagne makes you do them.”

Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826)

"One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough."

James Thurber

“Let us candidly admit that there are shameful blemishes on the American past, of which the worst by far is rum. Nevertheless, we have improved man's lot and enriched his civilization with rye, bourbon and the Martini cocktail. In all history has any other nation done so much?”

Bernard De Voto (1897-1955) American writer and critic.

“.....all the charming and beautiful things, from the Song of Songs, to bouillabaisse, and from the nine Beethoven symphonies to the Martini cocktail, have been given to humanity by men who, when the hour came, turned from tap water to something with color in it, and more in it than mere oxygen and hydrogen.”

H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) American editor and critic.

“Happiness is.....finding two olives in your martini when you're hungry.”

Johnny Carson, Happiness is a Dry Martini

"Cider was, next to water, the most abundant and the cheapest fluid to be had in New Hampshire, while i lived there, -- often selling for a dollar per barrel. In many a family of six or eight persons, a barrel tapped on Saturday barely lasted a full week.....The transition from cider to warmer and more potent stimulants was easy and natural; so that whole families died drunkards and vagabond paupers from the impetus first given by cider-swilling in their rural homes....."

Horace Greeley (1811-1872)

“The king and high priest of all the festivals was the autumn Thanksgiving. When the apples were all gathered and the cider was all made, and the yellow pumpkins were rolled in from many a hill in billows of gold, and the corn was husked, and the labors of the season were done, and the warm, late days of Indian Summer came in, dreamy, and calm, and still, with just enough frost to crisp the ground of a morning, but with warm traces of benignant, sunny hours at noon, there came over the community a sort of genial repose of spirit - a sense of something accomplished.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe

"A toast to the Cocktail Party
Where olives are speared
And friends are stabbed."

anonymous

“The Cocktail Party - a device for paying off obligations to people you don't want to invite to dinner.”

Charles Merrill Smith, 'Instant Status' (1972)

“....what is your host's purpose in having a party? Surely not for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose they'd have simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947 - )

“Cocktail party: A gathering held to enable forty people to talk about themselves at the same time. The man who remains after the liquor is gone is the host.”

Fred Allen

“Soup is cuisine's kindest course. It breathes reassurance; it steams consolation; after a weary day it promotes sociability, as the five o'clock cup of tea or the cocktail hour.”

Louis P. De Gouy, The Soup Book (1949)

"What contemptible scoundrel stole the cork from my lunch?"

W.C. Fields (1880-1946)

“Seating themselves on the greensward, they eat while the corks fly and there is talk, laughter and merriment, and perfect freedom, for the universe is their drawing room and the sun their lamp. Besides, they have appetite, Nature's special gift, which lends to such a meal a vivacity unknown indoors, however beautiful the surroundings.”

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826)

“Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot the corkscrew and for several days we had to live on nothing but food and water.”

W.C. Fields (1880-1946)

“We are fighting Germany, Austria and drink, and as far as I can see, the greatest of these three deadly foes is drink.”

David Lloyd George (1863-1945) British politician

“Drink is in itself a good creature of God, and to be received with thankfulness, but the abuse of drink is from Satan, the wine is from God, but the Drunkard is from the Devil.”

Increase Mather (1639-1723), Boston minister and educator.

“Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.”

James Thurber (1894-1961), American writer and cartoonist.

“Never accept a drink from a urulogist.”

Erma Bombeck (1927-1996) from Food and Drink: A Book of Quotations, Susan L Rattiner ed.

“And do as adversaries do in law, strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.”

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) The Taming of the Shrew

“Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts.”

Proverbs 31:6

“Never drink black coffee at lunch; it will keep you awake in the afternoon.”

Jilly Cooper (1937-)

“Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.”

G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

“Drink to nobody that you think is better than yourself.”

Hannah Woolley, 17th-century etiquette expert, 'Guide to ladies, gentlewomen and maids'

“He that drinks fast, pays slow.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

“Too much work, and no vacation,
Deserves at least a small libation.
So hail! my friends, and raise your glasses;
Work's the curse of the drinking classes.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

“Drink is in itself a good creature of God, and to be received with thankfulness, but the abuse of drink is from Satan, the wine is from God, but the Drunkard is from the Devil.”

Increase Mather (1639-1723), Boston minister and educator.

“Some brewers of Ale and Beere doe put it into their drinke to make it more heady, fit to please drunkards, who thereby, according to their several dispositions, become either dead drunke, or foolish drunke, or madde drunke.”

Matthias de Lobel, Flemish botanist 17th century

“In a word, coffee is the drunkard's settle-brain, the fool's pastime, who admires it for being the production of Asia, and is ravished with delight when he hears the berries grow in the deserts of Arabia, but would not give a farthing for a hogshead of it, if it were to be had on Hampstead Heath or Banstead-Downs.”

Thomas Tryon (1634-1703)
The Good Hous-Wife Made a Doctor (1692)

“cheese is the biscuit of drunkards.”

Grimod de la Reynière (1758-1838)

Horace Greeley

“There are two types of onions, the big white Spanish and the little red Italian. The Spanish has more food value and is therefore chosen to make soup for huntsmen and drunkards, two classes of people who require fast recuperation.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870)

"A man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry."

Ecclesiastes 8:15
Or in other words:
”There is nothing under the sun better for man than to eat, drink, and be merry. Go, therefore, eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with cheer.”

Ecclesiastes 8:15

from the 1766 Virginia Almanack

“The leaves and floures of Borrage put into wine make men and women glad and merry, driving away all sadnesse, dulnesse, and melancholy, as Dioscorides and Pliny affirme. Syrrup made of the floures of Borrage comforteth the heart, purgeth melancholy, and quieteth the phrenticke or lunaticke person.”

John Gerard, The Herball, or General Historie of Plantes (1597)

“Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast.”

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

"Eat with the fingers, drink with the nose."

Joseph Delteil (1894-1978) French writer, La Cuisine paléolithique, 1964

"Eat Not to dullness; drink not to elevation"

Ben Franklin

“Without the assistance of eating and drinking, the most sparkling wit would be as heavy as a bad soufflé, and the brightest talent as dull as a looking-glass on a foggy day.”

Alexis Soyer 19th century French chef. The Modern Housewife (1851)

“Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why; Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.”

Omar Khayyamcaq(1048-1131 A.D.)

"They all thought she was dead; but my father he kept ladling gin down her throat till she came to so sudden that she bit the bowl off the spoon."

George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion (1913)

“Gin-drinking is a great vice in England, but wretchedness and dirt are a greater; and until you improve the homes of the poor, or persuade a half-famished wretch not to seek relief in the temporary oblivion of his own misery, with the pittance which divided among his family would furnish a morsel of bread for each, gin-shops will increase in number and splendour.”

Charles Dickens in 'Sketches By Boz’ (1837)

“For gin, in cruel
Sober truth,
Supplies the fuel
For flaming youth.”

Noel Coward (1899-1973) English actor and playwright

“I'm not sure ginseng is any better for you or me than a carrot, but just in case the Chinese are right, I grow it in my garden. I stick a root in a jug of gin and call it Old Duke's Gin and Ginseng.”

James Duke, USDA botanist, as quoted in The Wall Street Journal

“I carry on mental dialogues with the shoots of the grapevine, who reveal to me grand thoughts and to whom I can retell wondrous things.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German author, natural philosopher

“The vine bears three kinds of grapes: the first of pleasure, the second of intoxication, the third of disgust.”

Anacharsis, Scythian philosopher (6th century B.C.)

“To make white wine out of red wine. Put bean-meal or three egg whites into the flask and stir for a very long time. The next day the wine will be white. The ashes of white grape vines have the same effect.”

Apicius

"People who drink light "beer" don't like the taste of beer; they just like to pee a lot."

Capital Brewery, Middleton, WI.

“What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning with infininite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine?"

Isak Dineson, Danish author (1885-1962)

Apicius

“The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
The French eat a lot of fat and also have fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
Conclusion: Eat and drink what you like. What kills you is speaking English.”

Michael Fitzpatrick, (author of The Tyranny of Health: Doctors and the Regulation of Lifestyle, 2000), writing in the electronic journal Spiked (www.spiked-online.com) Wilson Quarterly Spring 2003

Bernard De Voto (1897-1955) American writer and critic.

“WINE, n. Fermented grape-juice known to the Women's Christian Union as 'liquor,' sometimes as 'rum.' Wine, madam, is God's next best gift to man.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) 'The Devil's Dictionary' (1911)

“The South is dry and will vote dry. That is, everybody sober enough to stagger to the polls will.”

Will Rogers (1879-1935)

“All the great villainies of history, from the murder of Abel onward, have been perpetrated by sober men, chiefly by Teetotalers.”

H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) American editor and critic.

“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 (3rd President of U.S.)

“All the great villainies of history, from the murder of Abel onward, have been perpetrated by sober men, chiefly by Teetotalers.”

H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), American editor and critic.

“Teetotaler, n. One who abstains from strong drink, sometimes totally, sometimes tolerably totally.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) 'The Devil's Dictionary' (1911)

"Go along, go along quickly, and set all you have on the table for us. We don't want doughnuts, honey buns, poppy cakes, and other dainties; bring us a whole sheep, serve a goat and forty-year old mead! And plenty of vodka, not vodka with all sorts of fancies, not with raisins and flavorings, but pure foaming vodka, that hisses and bubbles like mad."

Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852)

“I would rather live in Russia on black bread and vodka than in the United States at the best hotels. America knows nothing of food, love or art.”

Isadora Duncan, America dancer (1878-1927)

“Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.”

William Hazlitt (1778-1830)

"I must point out that my rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after, and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them."

Winston Churchill, Said during a lunch with the Arab leader Ibn Saud, when he heard that the king's religion forbade smoking and alcohol.

"If you mean the demon drink that poisons the mind, pollutes the body, desecrates family life, and inflames sinners, then I'm against it. But if you mean the elixir of Christmas cheer, the shield against winter chill, the taxable potion that puts needed funds into public coffers to comfort little crippled children, then I'm for it. This is my position, and I will not compromise!"

A Congressman's response about his attitude toward whiskey.

Favorite wine quotes: "God loves fermentation just as dearly as He loves vegetation."

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"Wine: soil, sun, rain, and the hand of man."

Anonymous

"We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana as a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven on our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves, and loves to see us happy."

Benjamin Franklin