When I'm in Italy on a Friday night, my first supper there is a big bowl of fresh pasta and a glass of local wine, sitting outside. There's nothing better.
Going to a restaurant is one of my keenest pleasures. Meeting someplace with old and new friends, ordering wine, eating food, surrounded by strangers, I think is the core of what it means to live a civilised life.
"Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne? I ask merely for information." "I attribute it to the superior quality of the wine, sir. I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand." "Good Heavens! Is marriage so demoralizing as that?" "I believe it is a very pleasant state, sir. I have had very little experience of it myself up to the present. I have only been married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person."
now
I bring full-flavoured wine out of a barrel found
Where seven Ephesian topers slept and never knew
When Alexander's empire passed, they slept so sound.
And now it goes as it goes and where it ends is Fate. And neither by singeing flesh nor tipping cups of wine nor shedding burning tears can you enchant away the rigid Fury.
By the bye, as I must leave off being young, I find many douceurs in being a sort of chaperon , for I am put on the sofa near the fire and can drink as much wine as I like.