I've cited these before at times on this newsgroup and predecessors (since
beginning to collect them some 20 years ago) but here are some quotations
related to wine, in, or in the last case translated into, English. These
particular selections are flavored with at least a few grains of wry.

Cheers -- Max


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The wine of the Clos [Vougeot] was sent to the Popes in their exile in
Avignon, and Petrarch said that it was this that made them so reluctant to
end the schism and return to Rome! One abbot, already mentioned, sent thirty
hogsheads to Pope Gregory XI, and four years later -- Vougeot, even then,
took some time to develop -- was made a cardinal.

Harold Waldo Yoxall, _The Wines of Burgundy._ (Either edition, 1968 or
1978.)



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"Perhaps Fernand Point did indeed consume a magnum [of Champagne] while
shaving and dressing for the day, but few of us could afford such a regimen
either economically or physically -- and after all, Point died, undoubtedly
a happy man, at a comparatively early age."

-- Robert Finigan, _Finigan's Private Guide to Wines,_ 1982.



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"Enough," he said, "the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I
shall not die of a cough."

"True -- true," I replied; "and, indeed, I had no intention of alarming you
unnecessarily -- but you should use all proper caution. A draught of this
Medoc will defend us from the damps."

Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a long row of its
fellows that lay upon the mould.

"Drink," I said, presenting him the wine.

He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me familiarly,
while his bells jingled.

"I drink," he said, "to the buried that repose around us."

"And I to your long life."

He again took my arm, and we proceeded.

"These vaults," he said, "are extensive."

"The Montresors," I replied, "were a great and numerous family."

"I forget your arms."

"A huge human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent
rampant whose fangs are embedded in the heel."

"And the motto?"

"_Nemo me impune lacessit._"

"Good!" he said.

The wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled.


-- Poe (1809-1849), "The Cask of Amontillado."



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"You have heard the news: excommunicated. Come and dine to console me.
Everyone is to refuse me fire and water; so we will eat nothing but cold
glazed meats, and drink only chilled wines."

-- Talleyrand (Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord), letter to his friend
the Duc de Biron (better known as the Duc de Lauzun), April 1791. Sources:
_Larousse Gastronomique_, 1961 Crown edition (but missing, like so many
other highly flavored tidbits, from the "new" 1988 International edition);
also Duff Cooper, _Talleyrand_ (Harper and Brothers, 1932).