Write on: Ink-stained wretches on wine
Writers, whether they focus largely on wine or just on putting ink on page, tend to be fairly eloquent on wine (present company excluded).
As Julian Leonard Street (left) delineated it in “Table Topics,’ “Blot out every book in which wine is praised and you blot out the world’s great literature, from the Bible and Shakespeare to the latest best-seller. Blot out the wine-drinkers of the world and you blot out history, including saints, philosophers, statesmen, soldiers, scientists, and artists.”
A few other writerly bon mots du vin:
• “Be careful to trust a person who does not like wine.” — Karl Marx
• “Wine is made to be drunk as women are made to be loved.” — Theophile Malvezin
• “From wine what sudden friendship springs!” — John Gay
• “The cheapness of wine seems to be a cause, not of drunkenness, but of sobriety. …People are seldom guilty of excess in what is their daily fare…On the contrary, in the countries which, either from excessive heat or cold, produce no grapes, and where wine consequently is dear and a rarity, drunkenness is a common vice.” — Adam Smith (left)
• “Anyone who knows his history … must surely know his wines.” — Arnold Toynbee