Wine, like food, is so emotional. If you think about it, so much of the courting ritual is surrounded by wine and food. There’s a built-in romance to wine.

Lakshmi links wine to the emotional and social meanings that gather around eating and drinking, especially in romantic courtship. Rather than treating wine as a purely technical subject (vintages, tasting notes, status), she emphasizes its role as a cultural prop in intimacy: shared meals, dates, and rituals of hospitality that signal attention and desire. The quote suggests that wine’s “romance” is partly intrinsic (its sensory pleasures) and partly constructed by tradition—how people use it to mark special occasions and to create an atmosphere of warmth, flirtation, and connection. In this view, wine functions as a language of affection as much as a beverage.