Wine Wit and Wisdom – A Brief Interlude

Wine Wit and Wisdom – A Brief Interlude

Here in the UK, it’s the height of silly season, the annual summer period where the mass media turn to frivolous stories, or even more frivolous than usual, perhaps. The usual reason offered got his is because Parliament isn’t sitting and neither are the Law Courts – both sources of daily news. Then again, many people are away on their holidays and the schools are out, so the media are getting less attention.  Nor is this season is confined to the British. The French say la morte-saison, while Italians have stagione sciocca. The Swedes call it nyhetstorker,  the Germans Sommerloch. There are doubtless many more. So how about some Wine Wit and Wisdom?

Over the years, I’ve gradually collected wine words, sayings and quotations. So here are examples of wine wit and wisdom for your delectation, ranging from the banal to the profound, from the published to the apocryphal.  Some become printed on tea-towels, mugs, beer mats, tee shirts and other nicknacks. Others are now internet memes. Some languish in obscurity.

The First Five

1.One proposed origin of the word “squiffy” comes from the political opponents of the Liberal Prime Minister H.H. Asquith (1908-1916) – he was known to sway visibly, red-faced, in the House of Commons after imbibing.

2.  Winston Churchill allegedly drank two bottles of Pol Roger every day. On leaving the House of Commons worse for wear he encountered Labour MP Bessie Braddock who said “Sir, you are drunk”, to which his retort was, “Madam, you are ugly. However, In the morning I shall be sober”.

3. Graham Greene wrote, “Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector.  It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully.”  Travels With My Aunt.

4. In 1946 Arthur Kramer wrote a poem called Homily for Art Students, published in The New Yorker magazine. Here it is:

Turners, Dürers, or Bellinis
Do not spring from dry Martinis.
Goya’s genius, Rubens’ powers
Did not stem from whiskey sours.
Fumy brandies, potent ciders
Make no Holbeins, make no Ryders.

Alcohol’s ingurgitation
Is, in short, no substitution
For creative inspiration
Or artistic execution.

Guzzle vino
‘Till you’re blotto
Splotches will remain but splotches.
Perugino, Ingres, Giotto
Were not born of double Scotches.

Nor, alas, will full sobriety,
Whisk you into their society.

5. Ernest Hemingway wrote a letter to his publisher which included this advice: “Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That’ll teach you to keep your mouth shut.” 

Five More

6. “I like to think about the life of wine, how it’s a living thing. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing. How the sun was shining and if it rained. I like to think about all the people who tended and picked the grapes. And if it’s an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now. I like how wine continues to evolve. Like if I opened a bottle of wine today, it would taste different than if I’d opened it on any other day because a bottle of wine is alive. And it’s constantly evolving and gaining complexity. That is, until it peaks, like your ’61. And then it begins its steady, inevitable decline. And it tastes so fucking good.” ~ Virginia Madsen, in the film Sideways.

7. “The sensible course is to buy according to what it tastes like, rather than because of the probably mendacious label recounting the history of the terrain, the family, the mill, the artisan tradition and so on.” ~ Jonathan Meades, The Plagiarist in the Kitchen.

8. “A sight of the label is worth fifty years of experience.” ~ Michael Broadbent, The Compleat Winetaster and Cellarman