Over recent months we have been amused and edified by literary quotations on the A-board of Broughton Street's Villeneuve Wines.
Staff have selflessly distilled the reading of a dozen lifetimes to share concise wit and wisdom from across the ages on the subject of alcohol. Admittedly, the words they've chosen have all been unquestioningly positive about the qualities and associations of booze, but many of us these days welcome a little optimism in the face of so much unremitting negativity concerning all things pleasurable.
We particularly enjoyed their recent offering by Edith Sitwell: 'Winter is the time for comfort, for good food, good wine, for the touch of a friendly hand, for a talk beside the fire: it is time for home.' It almost made us forget the electricity bill and the bottle of Harvey's Bristol Cream we'd spilled over the new sofa.
However, in a brief moment of scepticism, today, a little tiny doubt crept in.
Villeneuve's latest contribution to Broughton learning is from Benjamin Franklin: 'In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria.'
Here at the Spurtle, we bow to no man in our admiration for the 'Prophet of Tolerance', and it would not surprise us at all to learn that he had anticipated W.C. Fields's suspicion of water and what goes on in it by over a century.
Only, Franklin died in 1790, and the word 'bacterium' did not enter the Oxford English Dictionary until 1847.
Is someone at Villeneuve Wines having a laugh?
