Do you remember any great poet that ever illustrated the higher fields of humanity that did not dignify the use of wine from Homer on down? – James A. McDougall

For some obscure reason, some authorities seem bent on making the drinking of wine a ritual more complicated than chess. They have succeeded in inhibiting a large section of the public and depriving them of one of the greatest pleasures known to man. – Craig Claiborne, New York Times Cookbook

Life is a chaplet of little miseries, which the philosopher unstrings with a smile. Be philosophers as I am, gentlemen; sit down to the table and let us drink; nothing makes the future look so bright as surveying it through a glass of chambertin. – Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers (1844), “Chapter XLVII: A Family Affair,”

You put it in new words, but it is an old thought. This is one of the disadvantages of wine. It makes a man mistake words for thoughts. – Samuel Johnson, 1778, quoted by James Boswell in The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.