Wine party

“ Wine, offered at a dinner party, should never be criticized, however poor it may be. A person who has partaken of wine, may also decline to have the glass filled again.
If the guests should include one or more people of well-known temperance principles, in deference to the scruples of these guests, wines or liquors should not be brought to the table. People who entertain should also be cautious as to serving wines at all. ”

“ We do not see how the glass of wine at the evening party, where he can take a little, not too much, is followed later in the evening and till the daylight hours, by glass after glass of stronger liquor, taken amid far different surroundings. ”

“ If we give this party, one thing is certain."
"What?"
"That boys and young men, some of them already in the ways that lead to drunkenness and ruin, will be enticed to drink. We will put temptation to their lips and smilingly invite them to taste its dangerous sweets. By our example we will make drinking respectable. If we serve wine and brandy to our guests, young and old, male and female, what do we less than any dram-seller in the town? ”

“ The justification for drinking of course asserts itself most clearly at home around the hospitable board, or in the comfortable corner of the club, where conversation is paramount, and an occasional sip serves merely as a comma or semi-colon in the talk. Under such ideal conditions, wine eases the fluency of conversation, brightens the wit, humanizes the humor, and mystically charms away that native diffidence which is a bar to confidence and sympathy. One does not readily deal lies to one's host at dinner over a glass of wine ”

“ Young maidens with glasses of sparkling champagne or rich brown and amber sherry in their hands were calling young men and boys to drink with them, and showing a freedom and abandon of manner that marked the degree of their exhilaration. Wine does not act in one way on the brain of a young man and in another way on the brain of a young woman. Girls of eighteen or twenty will become as wild and free and forgetful of propriety as young men of the same age if you bring them together at a feast and give them wine freely. ”

“ There are also coming-of-age banquets, whereat young Hopeful is enabled to stumble and stutter through a series of jerky and disjointed phrases of thanks—commonplace as they may be, which never fail to awaken the tenderest emotions in the heart of the maternal author of his being—by the aid of sundry glasses of the sparkling wine of the Marne. ”

“ The servants often leave the dining-room when the dessert is placed on the table, and when this is so, the wine is passed round from hand to hand, each gentleman attending first to the lady he has escorted and then helping himself before passing on the decanter, claret jug, or champagne bottle. The good old fashion of using silver decanter-stands has long disappeared, to the detriment of many a good tablecloth. So has the genial and hospitable fashion of drinking wine with one’s guests, and they with each other. ”

“ The English imitators, or would-be imitators, wholly forget that a guest at a French table can never languish for lack of wine, for “vin ordinaire” always remains on the table, while only the very highest qualities of wine are handed round by the servants. In England, for many years past, the table is altogether stripped of wine, and the guests are at the mercy of butlers of paid waiters, who use the wine either for their private drinking after the dinner, in the servants’ hall, or of hosts who, to save their wine, would stint their guests. ”

“ Dinner was substantial enough in all conscience, and the wine nearly as heavy as the food. Imagine quenching one's thirst with sherry in the dog-days! Yet so we did, till about half-way through dinner, and then, on great occasions, a dark-coloured rill of champagne began to trickle into the V-shaped glasses. At the epoch of cheese, port made its appearance in company with home-brewed beer; and, as soon as the ladies and the schoolboys departed, the men applied themselves, with much seriousness of purpose, to the consumption of claret which was really vinous. ”

“ Wherever civilisation penetrates, champagne sooner or later is sure to follow; and if Queen Victoria’s morning drum beats round the world, its beat is certain to be echoed before the day is over by the popping of champagne-corks. Now-a-days the exhilarating wine graces not merely princely but middle-class dinner-tables, and is the needful adjunct at every petit souper in all the gayer capitals of the world. ”

“ The dinner-bell then startled me in the midst of my labours; and I had barely time to put on my new dress-coat, so as to make a respectable appearance before Madame de Gabry.
The repast, generously served, seemed to prolong itself for my benefit. I am more than a fair judge of wine; and my hostess, who discovered my knowledge in this regard, was friendly enough to open a certain bottle of Chateau-Margaux in my honour. With deep respect I drank of this famous and knightly old wine, which comes from the slopes of Bordeaux, and of which the flavour and exhilarating power are beyond praise. ”

“ The serving of wine at luncheon is rapidly going out of fashion. A hostess belonging to the older generation sometimes offers her guests Rhine wine—a light, white wine—or, if there are men present, sherry or claret. In this case a wine-glass is set beside the water-goblet at the right of each place, and a decanter is placed on the sideboard. Wine-cup, fruit-punch, and similar beverages are served from a glass pitcher, lemonade cups or small tumblers being substituted for wine-glasses. ”

“ I have seen many hosts bother their guests with vexatious insistence to look at, hold up to the light, sniff their wine, even the empty glasses, almost throughout the whole duration of a banquet—at the risk of making them well nigh die of thirst. The true amateur, the wine-taster, knows perfectly well how to look at and how to smell his wine ”

“ Wine makes man liberal and generous; the offered cup was formerly the symbol of hospitality granted, and even the miser is more ready to share tobacco and wine than any of his other possessions. For it makes us communicative and confidential in social intercourse; it founds friendships, and is still the symbol of brotherhood. If it sometimes stirs up heat and dissension, it also smooths the way to union again; and, formerly, no reconciliation could take place without having a seal set upon it by a common cup of wine. ”

“ When champagne goes rightly nothing can well go wrong.” These precepts are sound enough, still all dinner-parties are not necessarily glacial, and the guests are not invariably mutes. Before champagne can be properly introduced at a formal dinner the conventional glass of sherry or madeira should supplement the soup, a white French or a Rhine wine accompany the fish, and a single glass of bordeaux prepare the way with the first entrée for the sparkling wine, which, for the first round or two, should be served, briskly and liberally. ”

“ Every Sunday, on going out from vespers, the worthy man went to pay his court to it, and when he was seated in the grateful sun, his mule close beside him, his cardinals stretched at the foot of the vine stocks all about, then he would order a flagon of wine of his own bottling—that exquisite, ruby-colored wine, which has been called ever since Château-Neuf of the Popes—and he would drink it appreciatively in little sips, and regard his vineyard with a tender air. ”

“ How do women learn to drink, Pa? They don’t go to the tavern like men, do they?”
“Not at first, Guy. Usually they begin at home, or at parties, or when stopping at the great hotels, where wine is drunk at the dinner-table. In many families, also, wine is used at the table, and fathers and mothers teach their daughters to drink it as a daily beverage. But generally, I believe, ladies begin their habit of drinking wine at parties, taking it, at first, not from choice, but because they don’t like to be thought singular.” ”

“ These dramatic extravagances served him well, for he was among a race of story-tellers and crude poets.
Parpon, uncouth and furtive, moved through the crowd, dispensing as much irony as wine:
“Three bucks we come to a pretty inn, ‘Hostess,’ say we, ‘have you red wine?’ Brave! Brave! ‘Hostess,’ say we, ‘have you red wine?’ Bravement! Our feet are sore and our crops are dry, Bravement!” ”

“ Let their fears be calmed by the fact, that the peasants in and about these vineyards dance and sing all day long but are never drunk. Cheap wines will surely be more effective than Total Abstinence Pledges, and, Christian though I am, I very much incline to the idea of a heathen poet, who has elegantly represented wine as a recompense given by the deities for the misery brought upon mankind by the general deluge. Fill, then, a bumper from the taper-necked bottle, and let us drink to the future vintage of the Marne. ”

“ A tired man in our heavy atmosphere feels often that champagne is the one wine that will give him life again; and as the ladies as a rule would think a dinner at a restaurant incomplete without champagne, ninety-nine out of a hundred Englishmen, in ordering a little dinner for two, turn instinctively to the champagne page of the wine-card. It is wrong, but until we get a new atmosphere and give up taking ladies out to dinner, champagne will be practically the only wine drunk at restaurants. ”

“ A silver wine cup, a porringer that had been her mother’s, nine silver teaspoons, and, crown of all, four genuine Venetian wine-glasses, tall and twisted of stem, gold-threaded and translucent of bowl, fragile and dainty of shape, and yet, like their as dainty owner, brave to make the pilgrimage from the home of luxury and art to the wilderness, where a shelter from the weather and a scant supply of the coarsest food was all to be hoped for. ”

“ It is enough if you bow to the master and mistress of the house, and to your opposite neighbour. After this the ladies retire. Some one rises to open the door for them, and they go into the parlour, the gentlemen remaining to drink more wine.
After the ladies have retired, the service of the decanters is done. The host draws the bottles which have been standing in a wine cooler since the commencement of the dinner. The bottle goes down the left side and up the right, and the same bottle never passes twice. If you do not drink, always pass the bottle to your neighbour. ”

“ On the day of the celebration, the Almoner is to find for the Convent, fine manchets, cakes, crumpets, cracknells, and wafers, and a gallon of wine for each friar, with three good pittances, or doles, with good ale in abundance at every table, and in the presence of the whole brotherhood; in the same manner as upon other occasions the cellarer is bound to find beer at the usual feasts or anniversaries, in the great tankard of twenty-five quarts. ”

“ Cocktails are sometimes offered in the drawing-room as a substitute for wine at dinner. If ladies are among the guests, these should be made very mild. It is perfectly proper to decline them, or indeed wine in any form. Where this is not served, whiskey and water may be offered to the men. To foreigners who are accustomed to taking wine with their dinner, it is a privation to go without it. ”

“ On descending into the basement beneath, the popping of corks and the continual clatter of machinery intimate that the disgorging and re-corking of the wine are being accomplished, and in the dim light we discern groups of workmen engaged in the final manipulation which champagne has to undergo, while fresh relays of wine are arriving from the cellars by the aid of endless chains. ”

“ No gentleman will grumble at the absence of wine at his host's table. It is good form for a host to serve or not serve wine, as he chooses; it is very bad form for his guest to comment on his choice. When any one who is conscientiously opposed to wine-drinking, or for any reason abstains, is present at a dinner where wine is served, he declines it by simply laying his hand on the rim of his glass as the butler approaches. ”

“ Passing through a large open gateway we enter the vast courtyard of the establishment, which, with arriving and departing carts—the first loaded with wine in cask or with new bottles, and the others with cases of champagne—presents rather an animated scene. ”

“ In the dark and smoky interiors of the workmen’s cafés and wineshops merry little groups of bronzed and grizzly bearded peons sit round heavy, old-fashioned tables, sipping wine out of great flagons, smoking big black cigars, gambling, and playing cards. Women, with jet-black eyes, and mantillas, move leisurely about the streets, seeking always the shady side, or sit upon stiff wooden chairs placed outside the entrances to their homes, plying their fans vigorously to keep themselves cool, and the flies from settling. ”

“ If the person was present whose health was drank, he was expected to remain perfectly still during the operation, and at the conclusion to make an inclination of his head,—this being the origin of our custom of taking wine with each other, which, with sorrow be it said, is fast exploding. A very usual toast for a man to give was the health of his mistress; and in France, when this toast was given, the proposer was expected to drink his cup full of wine as many times as there were letters in her name. ”

“ But who would nowadays want to open his heart under the influence of wine, when there is a member of the Council of Ten or even an inquisitor of the state sitting with him at the table? In such an office, a man ages more swiftly, and I'm planning to continue belying my white hair for quite a while and to be at least young when I'm having my wine, though I'm feeling my years in the presence of beauty. ”

“ Let the wines not exceed four—a light hock, redolent of the fruit of the Riesling; a glass or two of Montepulciano or of Pichon-Longueville, two flûtes of half dry champagne (cider rather than “brût”) or sparkling dry Saint-Péray; and for the after-taste—the last taste of sweets—the perfumed sunshine of Sauternes, Lafaurie, or La Tour Blanche of a well-succeeded year, iced to snow. “A glass of wine,” Richard Sheridan used to say, “would encourage the bright thought to come; and then it was right to take another to reward it for coming.” Let the courses not exceed seven, including the salad ”