25 Great Wine Quotes To Stimulate Your Palate

By Bob Lipinski

I love reading quotes, especially funny, historical, inspirational or those from well-known individuals. With that in mind, I’d like to share 25 of my favorite wine quotes that may stimulate you to reach for a bottle of wine!

“Life is too short to drink bad wine.” (Author Unknown)

“A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine.” (Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, 1755-1826, French politician and writer)

“No, Agnes, a Bordeaux is not a house of ill repute.” (George Bain 1920-2006, Canadian author, Champagne is for Breakfast, 1972)

“The fine wine leaves you with something pleasant. The ordinary wine just leaves.” (Dr. Maynard A. Amerine, 1911-1998, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Davis)

“Wine is one of the agreeable and essential ingredients of life.” (Julia Child, 1912-2004, American master chef)

“Wine is the intellectual part of a meal. Meats are merely the material part.” (Alexandre Dumas, 1802-1870, French novelist)

“Where there is no wine, there is no love.” (Euripides 480-406 BC, Greek playwright)

“Not only does one drink wine, but one inhales it, one looks at it, one tastes it, one swallows it…and one talks about it.” (King Edward VII of England, 1841-1910)

“If food is the body of good living, wine is its soul.” (Clifton Fadiman, 1904-1999, American writer and editor; New Yorker book reviewer)

“Wine is sunlight, held together by water.” (Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642, Italian Mathematician, Astronomer and Physicist)

“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)

“I love everything that’s old: old friends, old times, old man­ners, old books, old wines.” (Oliver Goldsmith 1730-1774, She Stoops To Conquer, 1773)

“Wine is a substance that is wonderfully appropriate to man, in health as well as in sickness, if it be administered at the right time, and in proper quantities, according to the individual constitution.” (Hippocrates, Greek Physician 460-377 B.C.)

“Wine is like sex in that few men will admit not knowing all about it.” (Hugh Johnson, 1939-, British author)

“Wine and cheese are ageless companions, like aspirin and aches, or June and moon, or good people and noble ventures.” (M.F.K. Fisher, introduction, Vin et Fromage)

“What is better than to sit at the end of the day and drink wine with friends, or substitutes for friends”? (James Joyce, 1882-1941, Irish novelist and poet)

“When it comes to wine, I tell people to throw away the vintage charts and to invest in a corkscrew. The best way to learn about wine is in the drinking.” (Alexis Lichine, 1913-1989, wine writer and winery owner)

“I feast on wine and bread, and feasts they are.” (Michelangelo, 1475-1564, Italian artist)

“The metamorphosis of grape juice to wine is a natural process, but the creation of truly fine wines requires balanced contribu­tions of tradition, expertise, and innovation.” (Angelo Papagni, 1921-2017, Papagni Vineyards, Madera, California)

“A bottle of good wine, like a good act, shines ever in the retrospect.” (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894, Scottish Author and Critic)

“Wine can be considered with good reason as the most healthful and most hygienic of all beverages.” (Louis Pasteur, 1822-1895)

“There are two reasons for drinking wine: one is when you are thirsty, to cure it; the other is when you are not thirsty, to prevent it. Prevention is always better than cure.” (Thomas Love Peacock, 1785-1866, English novelist and poet; Melincourt, 1817)

“Wine makes every meal an occasion, every table more elegant, every day more civilized.” (André L. Simon, 1877-1970, French wine writer, The Commonsense of Wine)

“You Americans have the loveliest wines in the world, you know, but you don’t realize it. You call them “domestic” and that’s enough to start trouble anywhere.” (H.G. Wells, 1866-1946, English writer)

“Our Italian winery workers were full of red wine and garlic. They never caught anything. The germs couldn’t get close enough to them.” (Karl L. Wente, Wente Vineyards, California)

Bob Lipinski, the author of 10 books on alcoholic beverages and food, consults and conducts training seminars on Wine, Spirits, and Food, and is available for speaking engagements. He can be reached at www.BobLipinski.com OR Bob@BobLipinski.com