Winemaking has gotten complicated with all the techniques and equipment flying around. As someone with extensive winemaking experience, I learned everything there is to know about crafting wine. Today, I will share it all with you.
Why Wine Quotes Hit Different After a Few Glasses
Look, I have been making wine in my garage for about twelve years now, and somewhere around year three, I started collecting quotes about wine. Not in some fancy journal or anything – just sticky notes on my fermentation fridge. There is something about a good wine quote that captures what we are all chasing when we pop that cork.
My favorite one? It is actually from Benjamin Franklin: “Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy.” I think about that every time I am crushing grapes in September, purple juice running down my arms, my wife yelling at me not to track it through the kitchen. There is truth there. This whole ridiculous hobby – the expense, the failures, the basement that smells like yeast for three months – it brings genuine joy.
The Quotes That Actually Mean Something
Hemingway said wine is “the most civilized thing in the world.” Easy for him to say – he was not cleaning mold off oak barrels at 11pm on a Tuesday. But honestly? He was not wrong. There is something almost ritualistic about winemaking and drinking that connects you to thousands of years of human history.
My grandfather made wine. Bad wine, honestly – way too much residual sugar and he never properly sanitized anything. But he would pour it for everyone at family dinners with such pride. That is what the ancient Romans were talking about with their wine quotes. It was not about the quality of the juice. It was about sharing something you made with people you care about.
Then there is Baudelaire with his whole “one should always be drunk… with wine, with poetry, or with virtue” thing. I used to think this was pretentious French nonsense. Then I had a year where three consecutive batches went to vinegar. The only thing that kept me going was the almost obsessive need to get it right. That is a kind of intoxication too, is it not? The pursuit itself.
What Wine Folks Actually Say (Not the Pretty Stuff)
Here is the thing about famous wine quotes – they are all polished and profound. Nobody quotes the real stuff winemakers say. Like my buddy Dave who once told me “the secret to great wine is admitting your first twenty batches will taste like grape-flavored sadness.” That is not going on a tasting room wall anytime soon, but it is more helpful than anything Leonardo da Vinci ever said about “divine juice.”
The Latin phrase “in vino veritas” – in wine there is truth – that one I believe. Not because wine makes people more honest (it sometimes makes them more obnoxious). But because making wine teaches you truths about patience, about accepting what you cannot control, about how temperature swings in your garage can turn a promising Cabernet into something you pour down the drain while pretending the neighbors cannot see.
Romance, Wine, and the Quotes We Actually Live
Euripides claimed “where there is no wine, there is no love.” Bit dramatic, sure, but he might have been onto something. My wife and I have this tradition where we open something special every anniversary – usually a bottle I made the year we got married. Some years it is incredible. Some years we take one sip, look at each other, and order pizza instead.
Those shared experiences, the good bottles and the disasters, that is the love part. It is not about the wine being perfect. Paulo Coelho wrote something about drinking from every cup and tasting all wines. What he did not mention is that some of those wines will be so tannic your tongue goes numb, and that is part of the adventure too.
Modern Wine Culture and What We Have Gotten Right
Julia Child said wine should be shared and accessible to everyone. I think about this a lot because wine culture can be incredibly snobby. I have been to tastings where people swirl and sniff like they are performing surgery, and I am just trying to figure out if I like the thing or not.
The best quote I ever heard was not from a philosopher or a celebrity chef. It was from the guy who runs the homebrew shop near my house. He said, “If you like it, it is good wine. If you do not, make different wine next time.” Simple. No pretense.
That is the through-line in all these famous quotes when you really look at them – wine is about human connection, not perfection. It is about the messy, imperfect attempt to capture something fleeting in a bottle and share it with someone else.
A Few Quotes Worth Keeping
- Leonardo da Vinci: “Wine is the divine juice of the grape.” (Though I bet his first batches were not so divine either)
- Alexander Fleming: “Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy.” (As someone who has treated plenty of infections in his wines, I appreciate this one)
- My neighbor Tony: “You know what pairs well with everything? A second glass.” (Not historically significant, but accurate)
What These Quotes Really Teach Us
After all these years of making wine and reading about it, the quotes that stick with me are not the eloquent ones. They are the honest ones. The ones that admit wine is sometimes disappointing and usually worth trying anyway. The ones that capture why we spend entire weekends stirring must and checking specific gravity when we could just buy a bottle at the store.
Maybe Hemingway had it right about civilization. Or maybe the real quote we should all remember is something my grandfather used to say after every glass of his questionable homemade red: “Not bad for grape juice, eh?”
That is the attitude. That is the spirit of every wine quote worth remembering. Not pretending it is perfect – just being genuinely pleased that grapes and yeast and time gave us something to enjoy together.
