Wine Trivia & Quote Archives

In order to keep track of Wine Trivia & Quotes on this blog, I will be archiving each piece of trivia and quote on this page. The list will continue growing as I keep adding new tidbits :)


WINE TRIVIA


  • Among the world's fruit crops, wine grapes rank #1 in number of acres planted.
  • Dom Perignon (1638-1715), the Benedictine Abbey (at Hauvillers) cella master who is generally credited with "inventing" the Champagne making process, was blind.
  • Thomas Jefferson helped stock the wine cellars of the first five U.S. presidents and was very partial to fine Bordeaux and Madeira.
  • Jefferson and wine: From Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, by Stephen Ambrose: "Jefferson ran the place with only seven servants (Abigail Adams had needed 30!), brought up from Monticello. There were no more powdered wigs, much less ceremony. Washington and Adams, according to Republican critics, had kept up almost a royal court. Jefferson substituted Republican simplicity - to a point.  He had a French chef, and French wines he personally selected. His salary was $25,000 a year - a princely sum, but the expenses were also great. In 1801 Jefferson spent $6500 for provisions and groceries, $2700 for servants (some of whom were liveried), $500 for Lewis's salary, and $3000 for wine."
  • Early Roman women were forbidden to drink wine and a husband who found his wife drinking was at liberty to kill her.  Divorce on the same grounds was last recorded in Rome in 194 B.C.
  • When Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii in volcanic lava in A.D. 79, it also buried more than 200 wine bars.
  • The French appellation Chateauneuf-du-pape passed a law in 1954 that forbids the landing of flying saucers in the region's vineyards.  
  • The word "toast," meaning a wish of good health, started in ancient Rome, where a piece of toasted bread was dropped into wine. 

WINE QUOTES

  • "Wine improves with afe. The older I get, the better I like it." Anonymous
  • "Nothing makes the future look so rosy as to contemplate it through a glass of Chambertin." - Napoleon.
  • "Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance." - Attributed to Benjamin Franklin. 
  • "Always carry a corkscrew and the wine shall provide itself." -Basil Bunting
  • "Life is too short to drink bad wine." - Anonymous
  • " My dear girl, there are some things that just aren't done, such as drinking Dom Perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit.  That's just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!" - James Bond in Goldfinger, 1964.
  • "Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right." Mark Twain
  • "Men are like a fine wine. They all start out like grape, and it's our job to stomp on them and keep them in the dark until they mature into something you'd want to have dinner with " - Anonymous
  • "The best use of bad wine is to drive away poor relations" French Proverb
  • "No poem was ever written by a drinker of water" Homer, Greek poet
  • "Reality is an illusion that occurs due to a lack of wine." Anonymous   
  • “I drink it when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company, I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I’m not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it. Unless I’m thirsty.” - Madame Lily Bollinger

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