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.

A bad review may spoil your breakfast, but you shouldn't allow it to spoil your lunch.

Doing what you wanted to do was the only training, and the only preliminary, needed for doing more of what you wanted to do.

It scored right away with me by being the smooth, fine-grained sort, not the coarse flaky, dry-on-the-outside rubbish full of chunds of gut and gristle to testify to its authenticity.

If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.

Death has this much to be said for it: You don't have to get out of bed for it. Wherever you happen to be They bring it to you—free.

A German wine label is one of the things life's too short for, a daunting testimony to that peculiar nation's love of detail and organization.