Do you ever talk to the television?
You know, when someone says something incredibly stupid… or, on rare occasions, amazingly insightful… that you just have to react?
In the case of the former, your response might be, “Are you kidding me?!?”
In the case of the latter, you may utter, “Right on!”
Well, I’m that way with wine. And whether it’s something I hear or something I read, there’s a good chance I’m going to react.
* Said poet John Keats: “Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.”
I say: Sounds like a perfect day — and the wine doesn’t necessarily have to be French.
* Said a leading Russian health official after Russia banned wine imports from the former Soviet republic of Moldova: “The wine should be used to paint fences.”
I say: Hey, it’s always important to have a nice, strong base coat.
* Said intellectual, author, editor, and radio and television personality Clifton Fadiman: “A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover.”
I say: Just because I don’t share my best bottles doesn’t mean I’m miserly.
* Said Paul Leary of Napa Valley’s Blackbird Vineyards: “Mother Nature gives us something new each year. That’s the beauty and the pain of agriculture.”
I say: As a guy at the gym tells me on an almost daily basis: “No pain, no gain.”
* Said author Maq De Villiers, quoted a few years ago in Karen MacNeil’s annual wine calendar: “Even the most inspired red Bordeaux, that cunning mixture of Cabernet and Merlot, can’t fill the head with spiced dreams quite like the great Burgundies. No other red wine can balance spice and fruit so flirtatiously, can seem at once so ripe and fragile, so decadent and clean, so irresistible. And, it’s fair to say, no other red wines can drive the poor writer to such extravagant prolixity.”
I say: Excuse me… I have to go look up “prolixity.”
