For a couple thousand years, wine has been held up as a beverage of history and culture and as a mark of a civilized society. It has been associated with the world’s great art and fine cuisine and is often depicted in the movies and in print as something to complement the good life.

Since wine is so steeped in tradition, over the past centuries, poets, great minds and clear thinkers from dozens of civilizations have waxed romantic — occasionally enhancing their thoughts with a bit of overindulgence — about this beverage we grow so well here in the Lake Erie region. So just for fun, below is a compilation of some famous verses about wine to contemplate as you sip a glass of something white, rose or red, dry or sweet.

• “A day without wine is like a day without sunshine.” Anonymous.

• “A house with a great wine stored below lives in our imagination as a joyful house.” George Meredith, English novelist.

• “Never did a great man hate good wine.” Francois Rabelais, French writer.

• “Wine was born, not invented…like an old friend, it continues to surprise us in new and unexpected ways.” Dr. Salvatore Lucia, American physician and writer.

• “Give me books, fruit, French wine, fine weather and a little music out of doors, played by somebody I do not know.” John Keats, English poet.

• “Good wine praises itself.” Arab proverb.

• “I love everything that is old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.” Oliver Goldsmith, British poet and playwright.

• “Champagne is the only wine a woman can drink and still remain beautiful.” Madame Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV of France.

• “The primary purpose of wine is to make food taste better.” Myra Waldo, contemporary American wine writer.

• “Wine is the most healthful and most hygienic of beverages.” Louis Pasteur, French chemist.

• “Chardonnay is a red wine masquerading as a white. Pinot Noir is a white wine masquerading as a red.” Andre Tchelistcheff, famed California winemaker.

• “Kiss French, Drink California.” Jerry Mead, recently deceased American wine writer.

• “Wine offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than possibly any other purely sensory thing which may be purchased.” Ernest Hemmingway, American writer.

• “One not only drinks wine — one smells it, observes it, tastes it, sips it and one talks about it.” Edward VII, King of England.

• “We all have met up with wine snobs or pedants who take every opportunity to show off, babbling arcane facts of wine jargon that have a place at a social occasion, even one designed principally around fine bottles. These meager personalities are to be shunned at all costs.” Barbara Ensrud, Contemporary American wine writer.

• “If I could move mountains, I would move Johannesburg closer to me.” Heinrich Heine, German poet. (Johannesburg is the home to Germany’s most famous Riesling producers.)

• “Water separates the people of the world; wine unites them.” Anonymous.

• “I carry on mental dialogues with the shoots of the grapevine who reveal to me grand thoughts and to whom I can retell wondrous things.” Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, German poet.

• “And one can always be very comfortable if one just has a little glass of bubbly along with one’s predicament.” Isak Dinesen, Danish writer.

• “In bringing this grape (Catawba) into public notice, I have rendered my country a greater public service than if I had paid off the national debt.” John Aldum, American viticulturist.

To talk all things wine, email Donniella at dwinchell@ohiowines.org.