Nick Harkaway Quotes

Who knows how to taste wine never drinks wine again, but tastes secrets instead

A wine goes in my mouth, and I just see it. I see it in three dimensions. The textures. The flavours. The smells. They jump out at me. When I put my nose in a glass, it's like tunnel vision. I move into another world, where everything around me is gone, and every bit of mental energy is focused on that wine.

The connoisseur does not drink wine but tastes its secrets

Enjoying the bouquet while resisting the wine." -Edward

A person with increasing knowledge and sensory education may derive infinite enjoyment from wine.

I drank at every vine, the last was like the first. I came upon no wine so wonderful as thirst.

Wine ... offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than possibly any other purely sensory thing which may be purchased.

There are thousands of wines that can take over our minds. Don't think all ecstasies are the same!

The name 'The Tig' comes from a wine called tignanello, and the first time I had a sip of this wine, it was such an 'aha' moment. I finally understood what people were talking about when they spoke about the body, the legs or structure of wine.

A glass of good wine is a gracious creature, and reconciles poor mortality to itself and that is what few things can do.

If any man gives you a wine you can't bear, don't say it is beastly... But don't say you like it. You are endangering your soul and the use of wine as well... Seek out some other wine good to your taste.

When I find someone I respect writing about an edgy, nervous wine that dithered in the glass, I cringe. When I hear someone I don't respect talking about an austere, unforgiving wine, I turn a bit austere and unforgiving myself. When I come across stuff like that and remember about the figs and bananas, I want to snigger uneasily. You can call a wine red, and dry, and strong, and pleasant. After that, watch out.

Unlike every other product that is now manufactured for the table, wine exists in as many varieties as there are people who produce it. Variations in technique, climate, grape, soil and culture ensure that wine is, to the ordinary drinker, the most unpredictable of drinks, and to the connoisseur the most intricately informative, responding to its origins like a game of chess to its opening move.

You cannot know wine by the barrell.

I know that wine is, above all else, a blessing, a gift of nature, a joy as pure and elemental as the soil and vines and sunshine from which it springs.

Wine is not just an object of pleasure, but an object of knowledge; and the pleasure depends on the knowledge.

There are no standards of taste in wine... Each man's own taste is the standard, and a majority vote cannot decide for him or in any slightest degree affect the supremacy of his own standard.

Music and Wine are one.

An aged Burgundy runs with a beardless Port. I cherish the fancy that Port speaks sentences of wisdom, Burgundy sings the inspired Ode.

The finest glasses for both technical and hedonistic purposes are those made by Riedel. The effect of these glasses on fine wine is profound. I cannot emphasize enough what a difference they make.

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

How I like claret!...It fills one's mouth with a gushing freshness, then goes down to cool and feverless; then, you do not feel it quarrelling with one's liver. No; 'tis rather a peace-maker, and lies as quiet as it did in the grape. Then it is as fragrant as the Queen Bee, and the more ethereal part mounts into the brain, not assaulting the cerebral apartments, like a bully looking for his trull, and hurrying from door to door, bouncing against the wainscott, but rather walks like Aladdin about his enchanted palace, so gently that you do not feel his step.

There's great wine from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile and, of course, California. But there's nothing like a really great French wine, they're so well balanced. The better the wine, the less you feel the effects I think.

The memory of some bottles can stay with your for life. While the wine doesn't have to be old and rare, a great old bottle can be like a time capsule, capturing in its flavors and aromas the time and place of its creation.