I rejoice as a moralist at the prospect of a reduction on the duties on wine by our national legislature. It is an error to view a tax on that liquor as merely a tax on the rich. It is a prohibition of its use to the middling class of our citizens, and a condemnation of them to the poison of whiskey, which is desolating their houses. No nation is drunken where wine is cheap; and none sober, where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage. It is, in truth, the only anecdote to the bane of whiskey. Fix but the duty at the rate of other merchandise, and we can drink wine here as cheap as we do grog; and who will not prefer it? Its extended use will carry health and comfort to a much enlarged circle. Every one in easy circumstances (as the bulk of our citizens are) will prefer it to the poison to which they are now driven by their government. And the treasury itself will find that a penny apiece from a dozen, is more than a groat from a single one. This reformation, however, will require time.
Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson (1801-09) spent a breathtaking $10,855.90 on wine during his two terms in office. That’s somewhere between $190,000 and $380,000 in today’s dollars. In 1989, New York wine merchant William Sokolin was showing off Jefferson’s bottle of Chateau Margaux 1787 at the Four Seasons when he hit a tray and felt liquid run down his leg. “I thought someone had spilled coffee,” he said. No such luck. An insurance company paid out $225,000 for the broken bottle, ranking it as the most expensive spilled wine in history.

One of the virtues of wine is that unlike any other alcohol beverage, everyone who drinks wine feels free to discuss its quality. “I like it...I don’t like it” is never enough. We have many descriptor words and phrases in the oenophile (wine connoisseurs) dictionary. The oenophile dictionary was first started around the time the first wines were drunk. It has been used in many written works by many famous people.

In S. Weir Mitchell’s, “A Madeira Party,” 1895, one gentleman commented: “ Observe, Chestnut, the perceptible smoke flavor…a fine, clean-tasting, middle-aged wine… a gentleman, sir, a gentleman! Will never remind you tomorrow of the favor he did you last night.” Michelangelo talking about the wine of San Gimignano stated “It licks, bites, thrusts and stings.” Jonathan Swift wrote in his “Journal to Stella”, “I love white Portugal wine better than claret, champagne or burgundy; I have a sad vulgar appetite.”
Wine can be compared to a bunch of flowers (fragrant, heavily perfumed); a packet of razor blades (steely); a grindstone (flinty); a steelworker (robust, powerful); circus acrobats (elegant and well-balanced); a successful businessman (distinguished and rich); a Florida beach (clean and pebbly); the earth (minerals and forest floor) and a Christmas pudding (plump, sweet and round). Wine is also compared to many fruits except grapes. If it taste too much of grapes, it is considered juice.