A restaurant wine list is praised and given awards for reasons that have little to do with its real purpose, as if it existed only to be admired passively, like a stamp collection. A wine list is good only when it functions well in tandem with a menu.

I made a mental note to watch which bottle became empty soonest, sometimes a more telling evaluation system than any other.

I know never to take a wine for granted. Drawing a cork is like attendance at a concert or at a play that one knows well, when there is all the uncertainty of no two performances ever being quite the same. That is why the French say, 'There are no good wines, only good bottles.'

Writing is a conversation, to me. The best kind. You can't get interrupted.

Wine ... changing even as we taste it, delivers a message with meaning only in our response. If we are in the right key when we receive it, our eyes will shine and we shall radiate pleasure.

It needs only a good bottle of wine for a roast chicken to be transformed into a banquet.

A restaurant wine list is praised and given awards for reasons that have little to do with its real purpose, as if it existed only to be admired passively, like a stamp collection. A wine list is good only when it functions well in tandem with a menu.