The quote about the wine was in _The Sea, The Sea_, a trudging sort of yarn by Iris Murdoch. It's taken me ages to find the passage with it in, being one of those books where you could quite easily permute the ordering of the passages without any readers really noticing the difference.
In food and drink, as in many (not all) other matters, simple joys are best, as any intelligent self-lover knows. Sidney Ashe once offered to initiate me into the pleasures of vintage wine. I refused with scorn. Sidney hates ordinary wine and is unhappy unless he is drinking some expensive stuff with a date on it. Why wantonly destroy one's palate for cheap wine? (And by that I do not of course mean the brew that tastes of bananas.) One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats, and if some of these can be inexpensive and quickly procured, so much the better.
Of course, the chap is somewhat arrogant, and very defined by what he is and isn't, so what he says should be taken with a pinch of salt.
