Straight from the vintners’ mouths: Wine-ish wisdom

Who would know better how to talk about our favorite beverage than the people who grow and make it? To wit:

“It’s too bad Dr. Zweigelt’s name wasn’t Dr. Pinot Noir.” — Canadian winemaker Donald Ziraldo (left) on why he was ripping out a zweigelt vineyard

“Wine is music from the vineyard.” — Marilyn Clark, Sarah’s Vineyard

“There are three principal ways to lose money: wine, women, and engineers. While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far the more certain.” — Baron Phillippe de Rothschild

“Some wine flavors are like an amoeba. A perfect wine would be a circle, i.e. in balance.” — Warren Winarski, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars

“One bottle of Spätlese goes perfectly with one lobster.” — Raimund Prüm, S.A. Prüm

“When grapes are grown on the edge of where they will ripen, you are in the right place.” — Adam Tolmach, Ojai Vineyards

“If you ask a winemaker the right way to make cabernet sauvignon, and he says, ‘Well, you pick it at 24.3 brix and de-stem 100 percent, ferment on the skin for eight days, let the cabernet reach a max temperature of 83.2 degrees, blah blah blah’—that’s just craziness, right? That approach is to winemaking what in-flight meals are to food. — Sean Thackrey (left)