Grafstein Wines Quotes

The entire Habsburg landscape was given a deep, even coating of musical interpretation, whether Smetana and Dvorak in Bohemia or Haydn and Schubert in Austria or Bartok and Kodaly in Hungary. As soon as you head south from Hungary or the Carpathians this music stops. And with food, the greedy, complex and extravagant Habsburg world of layered cakes, a mad use of chocolate, subtle soups and fine wines goes off a cliff. This is obviously an enormous subject, ludicrously compressed here, but the very idea of such complex foods trickled down in the west from royal courts, famously with the development of the idea of the 'French restaurant' in the aftermath of the Revolution. Indeed, we all eagerly guzzle a range of court foods - with many Indian and Chinese restaurants in the west also serving essentially court Mughal or Qing banquet foods, albeit in mutilated forms. ~ Simon Winder

Fine worries, like fine wines, are at their best only after they have been properly mellowed. ~ Dan Greenburg

Vanity is by far my favorite of all sins, and the camera lens is the ultimate vanity mirror. The camera captures all moods and nuances; immortalizes the soft and silky continuum that is humanity. Those still life moments seem so fluid, so representative of continuity. They are a single moment captured, yet an eternity expressed. All your youth; all your ages, captured and expressed in a single click.

Of all the indulgences, vanity is certainly my favorite which we should otherwise resist, but are inexplicably captivated by and addicted. What other animal would spend so much time pouting and preening for its reflection? Only humanity would participate in such self-adoration.

You would think we have the most colorful feathers or softest of manes. Rather, we are a naked biped that feels incomplete without some decorative element, accessory, or embellishment of the self. We are intoxicated by the image of the body, no different than we are seduced by fine wines, foods, or mind altering elements. We devour the skin, and peel away clothes as if they were the skin of some tropical fruit, covering a colorful and juicy interior. We hunt for bodily pleasures, and collect them as prizes; show them off in social situations as if our companions were some sort of extended adornment to ourselves.

We are revealed in our sensuality. To touch beneath the surface; to connect beyond facades, that unattainable discourse between individuals is put tentatively wi ~ A.E. Samaan

Wines are like women in that it's often the imperfections that fascinate. ~ Sam Neill

Generally speaking, when Australian winemakers try to make delicate, European-styled wines of finesse and lightness, the wines often come across as pale imitations of the originals. One exception is Australian Riesling, delicious, dry wines meant to be consumed in their first two years of life. ~ Robert M. Parker, Jr.

As long as one strives to become a gourmet or a connoisseur of wines because it is the "in" thing to do, striving to master an externally imposed challenge, then taste may easily turn sour. But a cultivated palate provides many opportunities for flow if one approaches eating - and cooking - in a spirit of adventure and curiosity, exploring the potentials of food for the sake of the experience rather than as a showcase for one's expertise. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Wine has been to me a firm friend and a wise counsellor. Wine has lit up for me the pages of literature, and revealed in life romance lurking in the commonplace. Wine has made me bold, but not foolish; has induced me to say silly things, but not do them. If such small indiscretions standing in the debit column of wine's account were added up, they would amount to nothing in comparison with the vast accumulation on the credit side. ~ Duff Cooper

Judge not,' it has been said, but being a juryman can be a pleasant occupation when one is not weighing up human actions and years in prison, but the books or the wines of the season. ~ Claudio Magris

Significance unfortunately is a useful means toward a personal ends in the advance of science - status and widely distributed publications, a big laboratory, a staff of research assistants, a reduction in teaching load, a better salary, the finer wines of Bordeaux. Precision, knowledge, and control. In a narrow and cynical sense statistical significance is the way to achieve these. Design experiment. Then calculate statistical significance. Publish articles showing "significant" results. Enjoy promotion.

But it is not science, and it will not last. ~ Stephen Thomas Ziliak

She lived frugally, but her meals were the only things on which she deliberately spent her money. She never compromised on the quality of her groceries, and drank only good-quality wines. ~ Haruki Murakami

What's foreign one can't always keep quite clear of,
For good things, oft, are not so near;
A German can't endure the French to see or hear of,
Yet drinks their wines with hearty cheer. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I think the Japanese love young, tannic red wines much more than most Americans do. Perhaps it is because Asians have a great fondness for tea, and tea is a very tannic beverage. Therefore a young, tannic red wine is something familiar to an Asian palate. ~ Robert M. Parker, Jr.

Buy ammunition! Remember that a man cannot have too many books, too many wines, or too much ammunition. Our adversaries on the other side are reaching for the excuse of lead poisoning. If they can push that idea through, you may wind up still owning your guns but without anything to shoot in them. ~ Jeff Cooper

Essentially, wines are fermented grape juice, so I'm trying to make the point that the wine world is about scores and marketing and kind of creating a scarce resource where they don't really exist. ~ Joe Bastianich

Beyond this point on the river Cambridge became a kind of miniature Venice, its river water lapping up against the ancient stone of college walls, here mottled and reddened brick, there white stone. Stained, lichened, softened by water light. Here the river became a great north-south tunnel, a gothic castle from the river, flanked by locked iron gates, steps leading nowhere, labyrinths, trapdoors, landing stages where barges had unloaded their freight: crates of fine wines, flour, oats, candles, fine meats carried into the damp darkness of college cellars. ~ Rebecca Stott

Best wines with character have abyss within. ~ Talismanist Giebra

The wines are Saccone and Speed,' he had said. It was a merchant's observation. He had meant that even there, in the centre of Africa, the wine had come from the shippers on our east coast, and not from the people on the other side. But in my imagination I allowed the words to stand for pure bliss. ~ V.S. Naipaul

In their censures of luxury, the fathers are extremely minute and circumstantial;89 and among the various articles which excite their pious indignation, we may enumerate false hair, garments of any colour except white, instruments of music, vases of gold or silver, downy pillows (as Jacob reposed his head on a stone), white bread, foreign wines, public salutations, the use of warm baths, and the practice of shaving the beard, which, according to the expression of Tertullian, is a lie against our own faces, and an impious attempt to improve the works of the Creator. ~ Edward Gibbon

Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Scores do not reveal the most important facts about a wine. The written commentary (tasting notes) that accompanies the ratings is a better source of information than any score regarding the wine's style and personality, its quality level relative to its peers, and its relative value and aging potential. ~ Robert M. Parker, Jr.

After the cafes of Paris with their exquisite wines and creamy fromages, crepes and steak tartare
screaming Adore me!
Madrid was these store-bought hunks of unyielding cheese and brick-hard baguettes, consumed in leafless Buen Retiro Park.ll Madrid, dressed as it was, tasting as it did, prideful as hell, didn't care what you thought about it on your junior-year backpacking trip. That was your problem. ~ Michael Paterniti

A young man's passion, a jaded siren's last chance for love, a world gone mad, cheap thrills, fast cars, expensive wines, the triumph of victory, the overthrow of ontologically incipient hegemony, and gum! I have no idea if this book has any of them! But I liked the part about the bunny. ~ Esther M. Friesner

I want to make wines that harmonize with food - wines that almost hug your tongue with gentleness. ~ Robert Mondavi

BALLS! We want the finest wines available to humanity. We want them HERE, and we want them NOW. ~ Bruce Robinson

Excitement is not enjoyment: in calmness lies true pleasure. The most precious wines are sipped, not bolted at a swallow. ~ Victor Hugo

But really, this is no great sorrow, particularly, you'll agree, when wine's imported duty-free. ~ Alexander Pushkin

Black vintners in this country make some really great wines. Explore a wine list and you will find at least one of our wines in the best restaurants. Buy a bottle for your table, and let management know you appreciate them including a Black winemaker in their stock. ~ Andre Hueston Mack

He had come to us only three years earlier, but had already won general sympathy, mainly because he "knew how to bring society together." His house was never without guests, and it seemed he would have been unable to live without them. He had to have guests to dinner every day, even if only two, even if only one, but without guests he would not sit down to eat. He gave formal dinners, too, under all sorts of pretexts, sometimes even the most unexpected. The food he served, though not refined, was abundant, the cabbage pies were excellent, and the wines made up in quantity for what they lacked in quality. In the front room stood a billiard table, surrounded by quite decent furnishings; that is, there were even paintings of English racehorses in black frames on the walls, which, as everyone knows, constitute a necessary adornment of any billiard room in a bachelor's house. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Wine lovers all speak of their First Time, a quasi-spiritual moment of awakening to wine's wonderment. After that, it's a life sentence. I've seen it happen to even the most confirmed beer sluggers. ~ Jennifer Rosen

Alexander, you broke my heart. But for carrying me on your back, for pulling my dying sled, for giving me your last bread, for the body you destroyed for me, for the son you have given me, for the twenty-nine days we lived like Red Birds of Paradise, for all our Naples sands and Napa wines, for all the days you have been my first and last breath, for Orbeli- I will forgive you. ~ Paullina Simons

The Loire Valley is grossly underestimated. The prices are fair, and the wines are real. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk

Tasting scotch was an intense experience; it didn't have the lovely layering of wines, ~ Daniella Brodsky

The sparkling wines from Ridgeview Estate [ ... ] are superb and will forever put to rest the notion that England is not capable of making good wine. ~ Eric Asimov

Chef Matt Accarrino has the best pasta in San Francisco, and Shelley Lindgren is one of my favorite sommeliers. Their attention to detail in the service, food, and amazing wines will blow anyone away. ~ Elizabeth Falkner

It may seem hard to believe - unless you sit down and taste them - but some of the world's greatest sweet wines are made in the Rutherglen region of Victoria, Australia. ~ Robert M. Parker, Jr.

I want to be able to listen to recording of piano sonatas and know who's playing. I want to go to classical concerts and know when you're meant to clap. I want to be able to 'get' modern jazz without it all sounding like this terrible mistake, and I want to know who the Velvet Underground are exactly. I want to be fully engaged in the World of Ideas, I want to understand complex economics, and what people see in Bob Dylan. I want to possess radical but humane and well-informed political ideals, and I want to hold passionate but reasoned debates round wooden kitchen tables, saying things like 'define your terms!' and 'your premise is patently specious!' and then suddenly to discover that the sun's come up and we've been talking all night. I want to use words like 'eponymous' and 'solipsistic' and 'utilitarian' with confidence. I want to learn to appreciate fine wines, and exotic liquers, and fine single malts, and learn how to drink them without turning into a complete div, and to eat strange and exotic foods, plovers' eggs and lobster thermidor, things that sound barely edible, or that I can't pronounce...Most of all I want to read books; books thick as brick, leather-bound books with incredibly thin paper and those purple ribbons to mark where you left off; cheap, dusty, second-hand books of collected verse, incredibly expensive, imported books of incomprehensible essays from foregin universities.

At some point I'd like to have an original idea...And all of these ~ David Nicholls

As long as I can hear the sweet melody of your words,
I need not;
The angel's secret, to be whispered in my ears

As long as I can lace your silky fingers round my own,
I need not;
Pretty diamonds, nor big cash nor gold

As long as I can watch the handsome sunshine of your face,
I need not;
Open skies, nor snowfall, nor the rain

As long as I can gaze into the emeralds of your eyes,
I need not;
New colors, new wings or paradise

As long as I can feel the tender tickle of your breath,
I need not;
The drifting wind, nor its call, nor caress

As long as I can feel your soft lips upon mine,
I need not;
Melted sugar, nor the most expensive of wines

As long as I can feel your warm body close to me
I need not;
A blanket, nor a bonfire's luxury

As long as I can see you every morning I wake,
I need not;
A mirror, nor a cloud, nor shade

As long as I can keep you in every petal of memories
I need not:
Dreams, nor desires, nor fantasies

And as long as I can hold you in every moment that I breathe,
I need not;
Oxygen, nor blood, nor heartbeats. ~ Sanober Khan

on the continent


I'm soft. I
dream too.
I let myself dream. I dream of
being famous. I dream of
walking the streets of London and
Paris. I dream of
sitting in cafes
drinking fine wines and
taking a taxi back to a good
hotel.
I dream of
meeting beautiful ladies in the hall
and
turning them away because
I have a sonnet in mind
that I want to write
before sunrise. at sunrise
I will be asleep and there will be a
strange cat curled up on the
windowsill.

I think we all feel like this
now and then.
I'd even like to visit
Andernach, Germany, the place where
I began, then I'd like to
fly on to Moscow to check out
their mass transit system so
I'd have something faintly lewd to
whisper into the ear of the mayor of
Los Angeles upon to my return to this
fucking place.

it could happen.
I'm ready.
I've watched snails crawl over
ten foot walls
and vanish.

you mustn't confuse this with
ambition.
I would be able to laugh at my
good turn of the cards -

and I won't forget you.
I'll send postcards and
snapshots, and the
finished sonnet. ~ Charles Bukowski

Wine glasses, like fine wines, have always been a symbol of civilized living. ~ Alexis Lichine

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. ~ George R R Martin

Liberty is like those solid and tasty foods or those full-bodied wines which are appropriate for nourishing and strengthening robust constitutions that are used to them, but which overpower, ruin and intoxicate the weak and delicate who are not suited for them. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau