Hemingway on Drinking Wine

OK, gentle readers, more tourism-related blogging. I mean, who can get all excited about politics, at this point? The country's going to hell in a Bush-woven handbasket, the political system is almost irretrievably broken, and putting your hopes in the Democratic party is like trusting in the Maginot Line, no? The Huns will break through.

So, anyway, here's a brief quotation from A Moveable Feast, Hemingway's (unfinished) memoir on living in Paris in his twenties. It's in the chapter on F. Scott Fitzgerald, or, maybe more accurately, on F. Scott Fitzgerald's alcoholism:

In Europe we thought of wine as something as healthy and normal as food and also as a great giver of happiness and well being and delight. Drinking wine was not a snobbism nor a sign of sophistication nor a cult; it was as natural as eating and to me as necessary, and I would not have thought of eating a meal without drinking either wine or cider or beer.

So, a week in Paris, and over there it's OK to share a half carafe of wine over lunch. Now that's a nice life.