It’s funny how an unintended consequence can become more popular than its original intent. For instance, you may not have heard of magnetrons but an experiment with these high-powered vacuum tubes unintentionally led to the microwave ovens in most of our homes.
The ritual of toasting is another unintended consequence.
Drinking a Toast
A toast, in today’s usage, is a short speech recognizing achievement, camaraderie and/or goodwill, followed by a quaff of your chosen beverage.
Before modern refinements of squeaky-clean winemaking, toasted bread was tossed into the wine goblet to sop up the murk of sediment and undefined organic matter. By the 17th century, draining a goblet in another’s praise was known as “drinking a toast.”
Etiquette mavens including Amy Vanderbilt and Emily Post provide detailed how-to’s of toasting, but the basic procedure is simple.
Establish Your Cred with a Toast
The first toast is up to the host or hostess, followed by invited guests. In advance, plan, write down and practice-practice-practice your words of praise, gratitude or bare-faced flattery, amounting to three-minutes tops.
About half-way into your event or after the main course, rap your wineglass with a utensil, breathe and stand. As silence falls and all eyes turn to you, breathe again and speak.
When your toast is complete, raise your glass towards your honored guest(s), make a short closing such as “To Harry!”, allow a few seconds for the room to echo your closing, and drink. Now that you’ve established yourself as host or hostess with the most-est or A-list guest, sit and bask in the admiration of family and friends.
Toasting Tips
- Do not wing it! Improvisation eats up a toast’s three-minute maximum fast, especially when lubricated with alcohol.
- Observe local customs. For instance, in many cultures, it’s bad form to toast with water.
- Be sure there’s beverage in your glass.
- Keep it clean. Save off-color jokes and tales of revelry for private laughs.
- If you’re the honoree, smile, nod in appreciation, but don’t stand or raise your glass.
- Clinking glasses is taboo at more formal events.
Original sentiments are appreciated, but if Mother Whit leaves you in the lurch:
Are you the host or hostess? By the bread and the salt, by the water and wine,/ Thou art welcome, my friend, at this board of mine.
Are you celebrating New Year’s Eve? Here’s to a bright new year and a fond farewell to the old; Here’s to the things that are yet to come and to the memories that we hold.
Or a General Future? May the best day of your past be the worst day of your future.
Here’s A Toast to Food:
We may live without poetry, music, and art;
We may live without conscience, and live without heart;
We may live without friends; we may live without books;
But civilized man cannot live without cooks.
He may live without books – what is knowledge but grieving?
He may live without hope – what is hope but deceiving?
He may live without love – what is passion but pining?
But where is the man who can live without dining?
-Excerpt from "Dining" by Edward Robert Lytton Bulwer-Lytton
And Drink: Here’s to Champagne the Drink Divine that helps us forget all our troubles. It’s made from a dollar’s worth of wine and three dollars’-worth of bubbles.
For Laughs:
- As you slide down the banister of life, may the splinters never face the wrong way.
- May you be in Heaven half an hour before the Devil knows you’re dead.
- May you always be the person your dog thinks you are.
From Irish Toast Masters: May those who love us, love us. And for those who don't love us, may God turn their hearts. And if he cannot turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles, so we may know them by their limping.
My Favorite Toast: Benjamin Franklin said, “Wine is constant proof that God loves us and wants to see us happy.” So, to us all, happiness, good wine and good health!
Join me for an upcoming wine class at The Chopping Block so I can toast you!
