As with most folks who love wine, we love good wine quotes. Social media is filled with them and tons of them are a hoot! My best half’s favorite wine quote was by the ancient Greek philosopher, and some say crazy man, Diogenes. If you know him it’s most likely for the time he spent wandering Greece with a lighted lamp in broad daylight exclaiming he was ‘in search of an honest man’. From my youth I always liked that story from this Cynic and my wife’s favorite quote from him goes like this:

“What I like to drink most is wine that belongs to others.”

 I must admit I am 100% with Diogenes and my wife on this one for sure, but my personal favorite wine quote is far more recent and rather than uttered by a Greek philosopher was emailed to me from a Napa Valley vintner.

Early in my wine education I sought out this vintner’s opinion on some of the wines we were beginning to accumulate for our Cellar. In the most diplomatic of fashions I was told he would not comment on the wines I had listed. I’ll admit I was a bit stunned and disappointed as I read this, but then, as with so many pearls of wisdom, the truth followed. He wrote”

“Remember, Scott, wine is essentially liquid art.”

Ralph’s line hit me like a ton of bricks, especially since my best half, as well as our daughter-in-law, are artists. He went on to use this illustration (in case I was a bit thick in the skull I imagine). He suggested I think about wine the way we might find ourselves in an art museum. I might spend the day engrossed in the Picasso’s while he might spend the day equally engrossed viewing the Monet’s. Neither is right nor wrong. One is neither is good art nor is the other bad art.  It’s all about one’s taste in art!

As I read his words, I was immediately transported back to the very first time I met the woman who would become our daughter-in-law. She came to visit our son from New Mexico and he suggested we might want to visit the Art Institute of Chicago since his girlfriend was an artist. About half way through she and I entered a gallery with modernist art. I blurted out “geeze, this stuff is ugly!” She smiled at me and quietly said “Mr. Phillips, there is no good art or ugly art. One might like certain art and also find other art is simply not to their taste.” From the look on our son’s face I could tell he was happy a potential disaster had been averted, but I was far happier with the lesson I had just learned from her. I now can look at any work of art and feel comfortable saying what I like – and what is simply not my taste.

So it is with art – and so it is with ‘liquid art’ or wine as more folks refer to it. Some is my taste and some is not. I’m free to love Monet as my favorite artist just as I am to love a good, solid Napa Petit Verdot. Likewise I still find some modern art ‘not my taste’ just as I tend to not enjoy sweet, white wines.

Ralph’s quote is framed and hanging in our Cellar. It’s a great thing for me to think about whenever I am selecting a bottle to bring to dinner, but also for our guests to see as they enter the Cellar, too.

Oh, and by the way, the vintner is Ralph Hertelendy of Hertelendy Vineyards, who you will be learning more about shortly right here at DP Wine Cellar.

Salude!