For not only is taste in wine as subjective as taste in women, but its enjoyment depends more on circumstances than does that of almost any other pleasure. – Cyril Ray (1908–1991), “The Wine when it is Red,” In a Glass Lightly, 1967

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,”