Wine Snob Quotes

When people lack true culture or are devoid of innovative ideas, they speak about wine, various brands of alcoholic beverages, or the quality of soap.

Anyone who tells you they only drink wine old enough to have been bottled by their grandfather is an insecure snob who has never had the sublime pleasure of a box of wine at a barbecue.

One looks back to what was called a 'wine-party' with a sort of wonder. Thirty lads round a table covered with bad sweetmeats, drinking bad wines, telling bad stories, singing bad songs over and over again. Milk punch-- smoking--ghastly headache-- frightful spectacle of dessert-table next morning, and smell of tobacco--your guardian, the clergyman, dropping in, in the midst of this--expecting to find you deep in Algebra, and discovering the Gyp administering soda-water. There were young men who despised the lads who indulged in the coarse hospitalities of wine-parties, who prided themselves in giving recherche little French dinners. Both wine-party-givers and dinner-givers were Snobs.

I don't cook anything fancy. Sheba's appetite isn't up to much and I've never been one for sauces. We eat nursery food mainly. Beans on toast, Welsh rarebit, fish fingers. Sheba leans against the oven and watches me while I work. At a certain point, she usually asks for wine. I have tried to get her to wait until she's eaten something, but she gets very scratchy when I do that, so these days I tend to give in straightaway and pour her a small glass from the carton in the fridge. You choose your battles. Sheba is a bit of a snob about drink and she keeps whining at me to get a grander sort. 'Something in a bottle, at least', she says. But I continue to buy the cartons. we are on a tight budget these days. And for all her carping, Sheba doesn't seem to have too much trouble knocking back the cheap stuff.

We are all shits, my friends. We are all literary snobs in this vicarious little room of our own, dilettantish, smug, hidden from the fucked-up world. We are enslaved to the folly and the whirlpool of our own obsessions. Where is now rather than our own deeply intoxicating pasts? Where is Lampedusa, where is the tragedy of others? What do we think of a man playing "Nessun Dorma" on a saw in the shadows of a U-station? The lost homeless in Kreuzberg, the drug pushers in Gorlitzer Park, the illegally immigrant prostitutes, freezing their arses at Hackescher Markt? And all the other foreigners, wretched foreigners, who don't have wine and company? Why do we meet for this writer who laments his lost Russia, when losses are everywhere? We adore him because we find some cracked mirror there, we think that words will save us, that a fine description will drag us away from our own disappointments, and offer consolation, or explanation, or the return of a disappeared father. We want to cancel our nothingness with his vigour of incarnation, we want to believe, truly believe, in literary salvation. Who else tells us that a twig reflected in a puddle is worthy of our notice? That it looks like an undeveloped photograph, that it symptomises something inside us, that it reminds us of the entanglements of words and things and reflections; that we must all notice the withering as well as the blossoming; and that immortal gesture is always present and exists inside the world...

The news that they were to have supper at the home of Lord and Lady Westcliff was received with a variety of reactions from the Hathaways. Poppy and Beatrix were pleased and excited, whereas Win, who was still trying to regain her strength after the journey to Hampshire, was merely resigned. Leo was looking forward to a lengthy repast accompanied by fine wine. Merripen, on the other hand, flatly refused to go. “You are part of the family,” Amelia told him, watching as he secured loose paneling boards in one of the common rooms. Merripen’s grip on a carpenter’s hammer was deft and sure as he expertly sank a handmade nail into the edge of a board. “No matter how you may try to deny all connection to the Hathaways—and one could hardly blame you for that—the fact is, you’re one of us and you should attend.” Merripen methodically pounded a few more nails into the wall. “My presence won’t be necessary.” “Well, of course it won’t be necessary. But you might enjoy yourself.” “No I wouldn’t,” he replied with grim certainty, and continued his hammering. “Why must you be so stubborn? If you’re afraid of being treated badly, you should recall that Lord Westcliff is already acting as host to a Roma, and he seems to have no prejudice—” “I don’t like gadjos.” “My entire family—your family—are gadjos. Does that mean you don’t like us?” Merripen didn’t reply, only continued to work. Noisily. Amelia let out a taut sigh. “Merripen, you’re a dreadful snob. And if the evening turns out to be terrible, it’s your obligation to endure it with us.” Merripen reached for another handful of nails. “That was a good try,” he said. “But I’m not going.

Everyone complains about wine snobs. Snobs of every kind have a bad reputation in America. No one understands that it’s the snobs who set the standards of excellence in the world. There are art snobs, literary snobs, music snobs, and in every case it’s the snobs who sneer at mediocrity. The gourmets are the food snobs. Without them we’d all be eating peanut-butter sandwiches. Like the gourmets, wine snobs know what they’re talking about. So if you’re going to drink wine, get to know something about it. Be prepared to pay too much for a bottle of wine. Be your own wine snob . . . it’s part of the fun.

We had a surprise visit from the Nicolsons. She is a pronounced Sapphist, and may, thinks Ethel Sands, have an eye on me, old though I am. Snob as I am, I trace her passions five hundred years back, and they become romantic to me, like old yellow wine.

I enjoy the idea of wine (almost) as much as I enjoy wine. Every glass of wine has a story, and as I savor a glass, I think of that story.

For them, it’s not about the riding; it’s about the bike, and the riding part is simply their way of fondling their possession. They keep their bicycles clean all the time, they fear scratches like they’re herpes, and they don’t ever ride in the rain (or as they call it, “water herpes”) so their bikes won’t get dirty or rusty. They’re like the people who collect toys but don’t remove them from the package so as not to diminish their value, or who swish wine around in their mouths without swallowing it, or who never get around to having actual sex because they’re too into sniffing high-heeled shoes while dressed as Darth Vader. These are not cyclists, they’re bicycle fetishists. In

The ideal of a well-stocked mind aiming at excellence in all walks of life has been replaced by the dream of a well-stocked wine cellar, the cellar now being a specially made wine cooler strategically placed in one’s house, to be viewed by even the most unobservant visitor.

She puts away four small plastic cups of red wine and then stares at a painting of a topless girl with a large silver sword for a half hour and then she begins to think: You call this art? This isn’t art! This is a joke! All of you are a joke! Fuck you and fuck Jeff Koons and the rest of those ‘80s art-star wannabes. Where’s the art that makes people weep? Where’s the art that makes people want to go to church? None of this is the least bit interesting. All of this stuff, all of this is so self-aware. It’s for ironic art snobs. I want something brilliant. I want something stunning. I want something that makes me look in wonder…