I prefer old-world wines like Lafite Rothschild and Margaux.

At the risk of being old-fartish, I like old-school wines that taste the way the winemaker intended, as opposed to organic and untreated ones with more bottle variation. If I want to take a risk, I'll go bungee-jumping.

Southern barbecue is the closest thing we have in the U.S. to Europe's wines or cheeses; drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes.

I can no more think of my own life without thinking of wine and wines and where they grew for me and why I drank them when I did and why I picked the grapes and where I opened the oldest procurable bottles, and all that, than I can remember living before I breathed.

Everybody tries so hard to pair wines with Indian food, and it has never been a natural marriage.

I look at each one of my restaurants, and I want my personality to come out. Some are serious, some are intense when it comes to food and wines, some are meat masters supreme. I enjoy all my guests.

Drinking isn't tops on my agenda. In fact, I hate champagne... and all white wines, for that matter.

I don't really have a life outside of movies. But I like to climb mountains and walk the dogs. I like fine wines and good restaurants.

Sure, food stamps are occasionally misused, but anyone familiar with business knows that the abuse of food subsidies is far greater in the corporate suite. Every time an executive wines and dines a hot date on the corporate dime, the average taxpayer helps foot the bill.

It is about the entire experience. It's not just a new seat. It's not just new meals. It's not just better wines.

For one country is different from another; its earth is different, as are its stones, wines, bread, meat, and everything that grows and thrives in a specific region.

I like to pour my wines for people. I watch their eyes, I can see what they'll like. Most people say they don't like dry wine because they haven't had a dry wine that's clean and fruity, instead of a big, oaky thing.

Only 10 percent of the people in the U.S. like dry wines. You shouldn't get down on people just because they like a little sugar.

I opened a restaurant that had nothing but California wines.

Chandeliers are marvels of drop-dead showiness, the jewellery of architecture.

I love wines, except when I'm dieting.

Italian wines are my favorites. I like a big, booming red wine that blows your taste buds away.

And with the money from your corn, from your rents, and from the issues of pleas in your courts, and from your stock, arrange the expenses of your kitchen and your wines and your wardrobe and the wages of servants, and subtract your stock.

As I've grown older, I've developed an appreciation for wines that are immediately gratifying but that can also provide great satisfaction over several years.

It may seem hard to believe - unless you sit down and taste them - but some of the world's greatest sweet wines are made in the Rutherglen region of Victoria, Australia.

What's important in a cellar is having wines that have a broad range of drinkability, which California Cabernet does. Wines with a broad range of drinkability give you a lot of flexibility; they are the sort of wines that make me feel secure. I think of my wine cellar as security - if the apocalypse comes, I can just go down to the cellar.

It's nearly impossible to believe just how provincial the wine world was in 1978, the year I launched my journal, 'The Wine Advocate.' There were no wines exported from New Zealand and virtually none from Australia (including Penfolds Grange, one of the greatest wines in existence).

The premise of Nossiter in 'Mondovino' would have been a lot more accurate when I started writing about wine in 1978 than when the movie was made in 2003. When I started, I was enormously critical of California wines, and I thought the entire wine industry was on a real slippery slope.

Back in 1990, there were fewer than 20 wineries in and around Paso Robles, a farming community midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Most of the wines produced there were rustic, highly tannic and alcoholic, with little charm or finesse.

The wine world is so big. Yes, there are styles of wines I don't like. Orange wine, natural wines and low-alcohol wines. Truth is on my side, and history will prove I am right.

I think the Japanese love young, tannic red wines much more than most Americans do. Perhaps it is because Asians have a great fondness for tea, and tea is a very tannic beverage. Therefore a young, tannic red wine is something familiar to an Asian palate.

In the wine world, crusaders would have wine consumers believe that the only wines of merit are something completely indefinable but which they call 'authentic' or 'natural.'

When I began visiting Bordeaux in 1979, only a handful of writers were there to taste the wines in the spring (and nearly all were British).

You can't simplify my taste and say, 'Parker likes big wines,' because it's just not true.

There is no question that Australia's most dramatic assault on the world market has been with its value wines. These are generally not from specific appellations but blends made by huge enterprises like Penfolds, Rosemount or Casella Estate - the group behind Yellow Tail.

There is nothing in the world like the extraordinary Shiraz and Grenache wines from South Australia. While the most sought-after are undeniably expensive (they're made in tiny quantities from ancient vines), they are huge, rich and concentrated, and represent some of planet Earth's most compelling wines.