I'll be adding more weird wine facts to this new section soon. Got a favourite off-beat wine fact? Please e-mail me and I'll add it: natdecants@nataliemaclean.com. Further below, I've also included my favourite wine and drinking quotes. Let me know if you have one to add.

Cheers,
Natalie   

There are 50 million bubbles in each bottle of champagne. (Yes, one desperate doctoral candidate counted them.)

There's no consensus on the purpose of the punt (indent in the bottom of a wine bottle): left-over remnant from glass-blowing days, better stability for the bottle when standing, or increased strength of the bottle.

Taste light-bodied wines before full-bodied, dry before sweet, mature before young. In the reverse, the second wine will pale by comparison.

Here's how many standard 750 ml bottles are contained in these large format sizes: magnum (1.5 litres, 2 bottles); jeraboam (3, 4); rehoboam (4.5, 6); methuselah (6, 8); salmanazar (9, 12); balthazar (12, 6); nebuchandnezzar (15, 20).

There are more than 10,000 grapes varieties in the world.

Nine grape bunches are used to make one bottle of beaujolais nouveau.

Napa Valley only produces 4% of the wine made in California.
   
 

One barrel of wine equals roughly 20 cases (of 12 bottles), which equals 1200 glasses.

The Spanish grape bobal has one of the highest concentrations of resveratrol of all grapes.

A glass of red wine provides 10% of your daily iron requirement.

Australians consume the most wine in the English-speaking world at 23.2 litres per person.

The Mesopotanians are believed to have discovered wine in 6,000 BCE.

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
- Dorothy Parker

I saw a sign that read "Drink Canada Dry" and I've just started.
- Brendan Behan

You must believe in something. I believe I’ll have another drink.
- W.C. Fields

I read about the evils of drinking, so I gave up reading.
- Henny Youngman

I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day.
- Frank Sinatra

I drink to make other people interesting.
- Geo Nathan, American drama critic

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
- Oscar Wilde

I've taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.
- Sir Winston Churchill

Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.
- W.C. Fields

This is one of the disadvantages of wine; it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
- Samuel Johnson

I do not drink more than a sponge.
- François Rabelais, French humorist

I am a drinker with a writing problem.
- Brendan Behan

A hard drinker was offered grapes for dessert. "Thank you," said he, pushing the dish away from him, "but I am not in the habit of taking my wine in pills."
- Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste

Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
- Ernest Hemingway

Great wine is about nuance, surprise, subtlety, expression, qualities that keep you coming back for another taste.  Rejecting a wine a wine because it is not big enough is like rejecting a book because it is not long enough, or a piece of music because it is not loud enough.
- Kermit Lynch
 

I drink it when I’m happy and when I’m sad.  Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone.  When I have company I consider it obligatory.  I trifle with it if I’m not hungry and drink it when I am.  Otherwise, I never touch it – unless I’m thirsty.
- Lily Bollinger

SOBER is actually an acronym that stands for: Son Of a Bitch, Everything's Real

An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do.
- Dylan Thomas

Consuming wine in moderation daily will help people to die young as late as possible.

- Dr Philip Norrie

You haven't drunk too much wine if you can still lie on the floor without holding on.
- Dean Martin

 I made wine out of raisins so I wouldn’t have to wait for it to age.
- Steven Wright

Where once, per chance, my wit hath shone,

In aid of others let me shine,

And when, at last, my brain is gone,

What nobler substitute than wine?

- Lord Byron

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.

- Anonymous
 

The Buffalo Theory of Drinking: A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo, and when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the culling of the weakest members. In much the same way the human brain can only operate as fast as its slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But it naturally attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That’s why you always feel smarter after a few drinks.

- Cliff Claven, Cheers


The difference between a drunk and an alcoholic is that a drunk doesn't have to attend all those meetings.
- Arthur Lewis

I don't like people who take drugs... Customs men for example.
- Mick Miller

I think I drink too much. The last time I gave a urine sample it had an olive in it.
- Rodney Dangerfield.

Reality is just a crutch for people who can't cope with drugs.
- Robin Williams

I know I'm drinking myself to a slow death, but then I'm in no hurry.
- Robert Benchley

I exercise strong self control. I never drink anything stronger than gin before breakfast.
- W.C. Fields


My dad was the town drunk. Most of the time that's not so bad; but New York City?
- Henry Youngman

Domaine Romanee-Conti is God's way of saying you're making too much money.
- Robin Williams

Time is never wasted when you're wasted all the time.
- Catherine Zandonella

Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is wine. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza."
- Dave Barry

Alcohol isn't habit forming. I should know, I've been drinking it for years.
- Tallulah Bankhead

There's nothing wrong with sobriety in moderation.
- John Ciandi

The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.
- Humprey Bogart


Actually it only takes me one drink to get drunk. The trouble is I can't remember if it's the thirteenth or fourteenth.
- George Burns

I can resist everything except temptation.
- Oscar Wilde

I got so wasted one night I waited for the Stop sign to change, and it did.
- Steve Krabitz

Age is just a number. It's totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine.
- Joan Collins