Wine and Music

Here’s a theory that keeps showing up at dinner parties: wine and music seem weirdly connected.

Look at the big wine countries—Germany, Italy, France—and you also get three of the biggest music factories in history. If you erased everything written outside those places, the world would still have most of what it calls “classical music.” England and Russia produced real gems, sure—but the old argument goes that their absence wouldn’t shake the whole canon. Even England’s musical hero, Handel, was German by birth, temperament, training, and style.

So… does liking the grape juice help musical ideas multiply? Hardly any major composer was a committed teetotaler. A sober-only composer is the rare bird.

And yet: for some famous names, it probably would’ve been healthier to take “touch not” seriously. Lully, Mozart, and especially Schubert spent too much time with the cup for their own good. The great composers could have lived without wine and beer—but in practice, they almost never did.