Cider

“This man is continually drinking cider; thinks it corrects some mistake in him; wishes he had a barrel of it in the woods; if he had known he was to be out so long would have brought a jugful; will dun Captain Hutchinson for a drink on his way home. This, or rum, runs in his head, if not in his throat, all the time. Is interested in juniper berries, gooseberries, currants, etc., whether they will make wine; has recipes for this. Eats the juniper berries as he walks.”

– Henry David Thoreau, “A Cider Drinker,” January 12, 1853

Never Enough

“There is one other thing I know I shall never get enough of — champagne. I cannot say when I drank my first prickly, delicious glass of it. I was raised in Prohibition, which meant that my father was very careful about his bootleggers, but the general adult drinking stayed about pinch-bottle Scotch as safest in those days, and I think I probably started my lifelong affair with Dom Perignon’s discovery in 1929, when I first went to France. It does not matter. I would gladly ask for the same end as a poor peasant’s there, who is given a glass of champagne on his deathbed to cheer him on his way.”

– M.F.K. Fisher in “Once a Tramp, Always…”