A collection of Wine Quotes, Wine Toasts and Wine Humor from around the world and throughout the ages. Read, Share and Enjoy. ~Cheers

A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover.

~ Clifton Fadiman

A man can live without art, but not without culture.

~ Anonymous man, fallen on hard times, sold his art collection but kept his wine cellar

A man will be eloquent if you give him good wine.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Man

A restaurant wine list is praised and given awards for reasons that have little to do with its real purpose, as if it existed only to be admired passively, like a stamp collection. A wine list is good only when it functions well in tandem with a menu.

~ Gerald Asher

Age appears to be best in four things – old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

~ Francis Bacon, 1624

And wine can of their wits the wise beguile, make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

~ Alexander Pope

Beer is made by men, wine by God!

~ Martin Luther

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.

~ Isadora Duncan

Burgundy for kings, Champagne for duchesses, Claret for gentlemen.

~ Anon French Proverb

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

Come quickly! I am tasting stars!

~ Dom Perignon at his first sip of champagne

Compromises are for relationships, not wine.

~ Sir Robert Scott Caywood

Drink wine, and you will sleep well. Sleep, and you will not sin. Avoid sin, and you will be saved. Ergo, drink wine and be saved.

~ Medieval German saying

Drinking good wine with good food in good company is one of life’s most civilized pleasures.

~ Michael Broadbent

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

~ Psalms 75:8

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

God made only water, but man made wine.

~ Victor Hugo, 1856

Good wine ruins the purse; bad wine ruins the stomach.

~ Spanish saying

Hardly did it appear, than from my mouth it passed into my heart.

~ Abbé de Challieu, 1715, upon first tasting Champagne

He who aspires to be a serious wine drinker must drink claret.

~ Samuel Johnson

He who loves not wine, women and song remains a fool his whole life long.

~ Martin Luther, 1777

I am certain that the good Lord never intended grapes to be made into grape jelly.

~ Fiorello La Guardia, former NYC Mayor

I cook with wine; sometimes I even add it to the food.

~ W.C. Fields

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.

~ Bishop of Seville

I like best the wine drunk at the cost of others.

~ Diogenes the Cynic

I love everything that’s old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.

~ Oliver Goldsmith

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 serve your Beaune to my friends, but your Volnay I keep for myself.

~ Voltaire

I was in love with a beautiful blonde once. She drove me to drink; that’s the one thing I’m indebted to her for.

~ W.C. Fields

I’m not worried about the reds; they’ll keep OK. But I am worried about the whites.

~ Anonymous “white collar” criminal was quoted before leaving his collection to serve a one year jail sentence

If food is the body of good living, wine is its soul.

~ Clifton Fadiman

In the order named, these are the hardest to control: Wine, Women, and Song.

~ Franklin P. Adams

In victory, you deserve champagne; in defeat, you need it.

~ Kevin Zraly, Windows on the World Complete Wine Course, 1997

In vino veritas.

~ Pliny Historia Naturalis

It takes a lot of beer to make good wine.

~ Lou Preston, Preston Vineyards

Life is too short to drink bad wine.

~ Anonymous

Madame, I may be drunk, but you are ugly, and tomorrow I will be sober.

~ Winston Churchill to Bessie Braddock, a well-known socialist in England, while attended a dinner

Making good wine is a skill; making fine wine is an art.

~ Robert Mondavi

Making wine is like having children; you love them all, but boy, are they different.

~ Bunny Finkelstein

Men are like wine – some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age.

~ Pope John XXIII

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

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

~ John Maynard Keynes

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

Not since lunch.

~ British wine legend Harry Waugh when asked whether he ever confused a Bordeaux with a Burgundy in a blind tasting

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

~ Napoleon

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, 1340

Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy.

~ Alexander Fleming (1881-1955), the Scottish bacteriologist credited with discovering Penicillin in 1928

Poetry is devil’s wine.

~ St. Augustine

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.

~ Leonard S. Bernstein, 1982

She gets to keep the chalet and the Rolls, I want the Montrachet.

~ Anonymous

The best use of bad wine is to drive away poor relations.

~ French proverb

The connoisseur does not drink wine but tastes its secrets.

~ Salvador Dali

The French drink them young, so a Socialist government won’t take them. The English drink them old, so they can show their friends cobwebs and dusty bottles. The American drink them exactly when they are ready, because they don’t know any better.

~ Anonymous discussing drinking the wines of Bordeaux

The great evil of wine is that it first seizes the feet, it is a crafty wrestler.

~ Titus Maccius, 190 BC

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 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.

~ Francis Ford Coppola about Filmmaking and winemaking

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

~ William Shakespeare

There is nothing like wine for conjuring up feelings of contentment and goodwill. It is less of a drink than an experience, an evocation, a spirit. It produces sensations that defy description.

~ Thomas Conklin, Wine: A Primer

Up to the age of forty eating is beneficial. After forty, drinking.

~ The Talmud, 200BC

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

What though youth gave love and roses age still leaves us friends and wine.

~ Thomas Moore

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

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, 424 BC

Wine and wenches empty men’s purses.

~ English Proverb

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

Wine cheers the sad, revives the old, inspires the young, makes weariness forget his toil.

~ Lord Byron

Wine improves with age. The older I get, the better I like it.

~ Anonymous

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

Wine is at the head of all medicines; where wine is lacking, drugs are necessary.

~ Babylonian Talmud: Baba Bathra

Wine is bottled poetry.

~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Wine is life.

~ Petronius, Roman writer

Wine is the most civilized thing in the world.

~ Ernest Hemingway

Wine is the most healthful and most hygienic of beverages.

~ Louis Pasteur

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

~ Samuel Johnson, April 28, 1778

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

~ Benjamin Franklin

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

~ André Simon

Wine offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than possibly any other purely sensory thing which may be purchased.

~ Ernest Hemingway

Wine rejoices the heart of man and joy is the mother of all virtues.

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1771

Wine. The intellectual part of the meal.

~ Alexandre Dumas, 1873

Do you know a good quote that we are missing?  Send us a message and let us know! uncork@bottlebank.com.

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