Edgar Allen Poe may have drunk himself to death but his tastes reveal a staggering ignorance about alcohol

Revisiting Brideshead, we see that wine ministers to the sense of being as do few other things

A history of convivial symposia or drinking parties is rare. but one archival document opens a window on a past scene of drinking

Jacob Tonson the Elder published Milton and found paradise in his very own English vineyard

In David Copperfield, wine both entices and endangers and its dubious charms weren't lost on Dickens himself

For Henry James, the Medoc was as much a moral and emotional wine-growing locale as it a physical place

Shakespeare's Falstaff — suspicious of the "sober-blooded" — is veritably rhapsodic about the empowering virtues of Andalusian sherry

The mercurial brat pack writer is at his heady best — and most revealing — in his collected works on wine

Bordeaux was more than a drink for Baudelaire. It served as a potion which could multiply individuality

Keats was clearly intoxicated by claret, which may explain why his poetry about wine is rather inaccurate

A master of drinking scenes, Shakespeare brilliantly articulates the ambivalence of wine — Cassio's devil and Iago's instrument — throughout Othello

John Adams's taste for dry — not sweet — champagne exemplified the changing palettes of the English upper classes

The terminology of modern wine-tasting is fussily analytical. Maybe it's worth heeding our sensory impressions, a la Sancho Panza

For Jonathan Swift, a medicinal hogshead was the perfect measure of wine

Decadent and consoling by turns, Massic was the poet Horace's aide-mémoire

Emile Zola's novel L'Assomoir is enough to turn even the hardened drinker temporarily tee-total

John Gay's poem, "Wine" is not a burlesque, as Dr Johnson proclaimed it, but a sophisticated tribute to Milton's "Paradise Lost"

The cheap 1980s plonks immortalised by Harold Pinter are making a welcome comeback

The great man of letters was better at holding a debate than his drink

Flaubert's L'education Sentimentale is full of moral dilemmas, punctuated by fine wines

Geoffrey Madan was a noted belletrist and collector of aphorisms. But he also beat Cys Asquith in a Benedictine drinking bout

J.K. Huysmans's high priest of decadence Des Esseintes had a penchant for gothic grub. But which vintages would best match a stygian supper?

New columnist Saintsbury relates the tale of Christmas Eve in Jane Austen's Emma — but which wine did Mr Elton employ in his quest to warm the heroine's heart?