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Gerald Asher Quotes

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

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.'

Gerald Asher
Wine, Play, Two

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

Gerald Asher
Wine, Evaluation, Watches
Gerald Asher (2012). “A Carafe of Red”, p.146, Univ of California Press

Long ago, during my apprenticeship in the wine trade, I learned that wine is more than the sum of its parts, and more than an expression of its physical origin. The real significance of wine as the nexus of just about everything became clearer to me when I started writing about it. The more I read, the more I traveled, and the more questions I asked, the further I was pulled into the realms of history and economics, politics, literature, food, community, and all else that affects the way we live. Wine, I found, draws on everything and leads everywhere.

Gerald Asher
Real, Writing, Wine
Gerald Asher (2012). “A Carafe of Red”, p.1, Univ of California Press

Inevitably I came to associate any wine I met with a specific place and a particular slant of history. I learned to perceive more than could be deduced from an analysis of the physical elements in the glass. For me, an important part of the pleasure of wine is its reflection of the total environment that produced it. If I find in a wine no hint of where it was grown, no mark of the summer when the fruit ripened, and no indication of the usages common among those who made it, I am frustrated and disappointed. Because that is what a good, honest wine should offer.

Gerald Asher
Summer, Wine, Reflection
Gerald Asher (2011). “A Vineyard in My Glass”, p.2, Univ of California Press

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

Gerald Asher
Wine, Needs, Bottles

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.

Gerald Asher
Real, Wine, Awards

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.

Gerald Asher
Wine, Eye, Keys

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

Gerald Asher
Writing, Kind, Conversation

One thing I don't think that we have enough of in wine writing is the use of cause and effect. Whatever wine tastes like, whatever you're going to do with it, it is as it is for a reason.

Gerald Asher
Writing, Wine, Thinking

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