"Ah, then..."
Johannes Brahms was a very witty man. He could be nasty, but he always made people laugh - the ones who weren't his victim. The anecdote that I like best has a self-deprecating surface that hardly conceals the man's cunning. Quite the oenophile, Brahms was delighted to be given a pre-concert dinner, one evening in Koblenz (in 1876), at the home of one Stadrat Wegeler, a noted wine-merchant. Here is how Georg Henschel, a singer and friend of Brahms who was also at the dinner, captured Brahms's rapier thrust:
Towards the end of the repast, which turned out to be rather a sumptuous affair, relished by Brahms as much as by any of us, a bottle of old Rauenthaler of the year '65 was opened, with due ceremony, by our host. It proved indeed to be a rare drop, and we all sat in almost reverential silence, bent over the high, light-green goblets, which we held in close proximity to our respective noses. Wegeler at last broke the silence with the solemn words: "Yes, gentlemen, what Brahms is among composers, this Rauenthaler is among the wines." Quick as lightning Brahms explained: "Ah, then let's have a bottle of the Bach now!"
G Henschel, Musings and Memories of a Musician (Macmillan 1918), quoted in Ivor Keys, Johannes Brahms (Christopher Helm, 1989)
