Top 30 Quotes About Wine From Industry Pros

Top 30 Quotes about Wine

Our favorite wine quotes from winemakers, sommeliers, chefs, and wordsmiths.

Winelovers worldwide have experienced life through the lens of a special bottle of wine. At times in the company of others and other times alone. Lord Byron once wrote that “wine cheers the sad, revives the old, inspires the young, makes weariness forget his toil.” Good wine is there during every phase and chapter of life.

We have collected some of our favorite wine-related quotes from winemakers, sommeliers, chefs, wordsmiths, and food and drink personalities. These quotes remind us of adversity, solace, joy, and all the varied facets of the human experience.

“I’ve been writing about wine for forty years, but every day I learn something new.”

– Jancis Robinson, OBE, MW – Wine Critic

“Wine is the most delicious, stimulating, varied and infuriatingly complicated drink in the world.”

– Jancis Robinson, OBE, MW – Wine Critic

“Great wine is great art, my friend. I am, in effect, a shepherd… whose mission is to offer the public another form of great art and to guide its appreciation thereof.”

– Steven Spurrier, Organizer Judgement of Paris

“It all begins with the soil, the vine, the grape. The smell of the vineyard – like inhaling birth.”

– Steven Spurrier, Organizer Judgement of Paris

“The more I have learned about wine … the more I have realized that it weaves in with human history from its very beginning as few, if any, other products do.”

– Hugh Johnson, OBE – Author of The Story of Wine

“Wine connects man and nature and time in a way nothing else does.”

– Hugh Johnson, OBE – Author of The Story of Wine

“There is always something new to learn, and it becomes a lifestyle.”

– Carlton McCoy, MS, President and CEO of Heitz Cellar

“Wine doesn’t have to be expensive to be good – wine makes food taste better– and it’s fun!”

– Andrea Robinson, MS – Three-time James Beard Award Winner

“If there is a magic wand I could wave, it would be that every restaurant in America would start buying from local wineries.”

– Doug Frost, MW, MS – One of four people to hold both Master Sommelier and Master of Wine

“I think we should focus upon flavor, no matter how crazy it sounds at times, and let people find things they love.”

– Doug Frost, MW, MS – One of four people to hold both Master Sommelier and Master of Wine

“If any grape would be at home in the pose of the femme fatale – smoke curling from its lip, long, irresistible legs crossed as another winemaker is sent to his doom – it would be Pinot Noir.”

– Eric Asimov, Chief Wine Critic for The New York Times, author of “How to Love Wine”

“I want people to know their palate is a snowflake. We all like different things. Why should we all have the same taste in wines?”

– Gary Vaynerchuk – Owner of VaynerX, Founder of Empathy Wines

“I always knew the importance of it, since I was three or four years old my mother used to feed me wine and water. I grew up with wine as liquid food.”

– Robert Mondavi, Winemaker and Founder of Mondavi Winery

“In the wine world, crusaders would have wine consumers believe that the only wines of merit are something completely indefinable but which they call ‘authentic’ or ‘natural.’”

– Robert Mondavi, Winemaker and Founder of Mondavi Winery

“I believe that the responsibility of the winemaker is to take that fruit and get it into the bottle as the most natural and purest expression of that vineyard, of the grape varietal or blend, and of the vintage.”

– Robert M. Parker, Jr., Founder of the Wine Advocate

“Wine to me is something that brings people together. Wine does promote conversation and promote civility, but it’s also fascinating. It’s the greatest subject to study. No matter how much you learn, every vintage is going to come at you with different factors that make you have to think again.”

– Robert M. Parker, Jr., Founder of the Wine Advocate

“Drinking good wine with good food in good company is one of life’s most civilized pleasures.”

– Michael Broadbent, MW, Wine Critic, Writer

“Wines are like people. Some are perfect but boring, some are precocious but fail to live up to their promise, and some may be flawed, but the way they may develop is endlessly fascinating.”

– Michael Broadbent, MW, Wine Critic, Writer

“God made Cabernet Sauvignon, whereas the Devil made Pinot Noir.”

– André Tchelistcheff, Winemaker

“A winemaker never, never changes the character of a wine. The character comes from the grapes.”

– Michel Rolland, Oenologist and Consultant

“There are no great enologists. Only good grapes.”

– Michel Rolland, Oenologist and Consultant

“When it comes to wine, I tell people to throw away the vintage charts and invest in a corkscrew. The best way to learn about wine is the drinking.”

– Alexis Lichine, Russian Wine Writer and Entrepreneur

“Fine wine leaves you with something pleasant. The ordinary wine just leaves.”

– Maynard Amerine, Wine Research Pioneer

“Appreciative tasting must involve an element of analysis – but don’t be too judgmental, since in the real drinking world most wine attributes are enjoyed, not despised.”

– Andrew Jeffords, Wine Writer

“Wine is not wine alone; wine is part of life.”

– Andrew Jeffords, Wine Writer

“Man does not live by Burgundy and Champagne alone. Well, sometimes one does.”

– Charles Curtis, MW Journalist, Wine Advisor, Writer

“Even though most view wine as being a pretentious subject, or something that only people with a lot of money drink, wine is meant to be a communal thing that brings people together.“

– Yannic Benjamin, Sommelier and Co-Founder of Wheeling Forward

“A wine is ready when you can’t bear to wait for it any longer.”

– Karen MacNeil, Consultant, Author of “The Wine Bible”

“Wine can make life more enjoyable. It makes you slow down and when you do, you can appreciate everyone around you – especially your loved ones – a little bit more.”

– Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher, Journalists, Wine Critics

“I never taste the wine first in restaurants, I just ask the waiter to pour.”

– Nigella Lawson, English Food TV personality and cook

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