Oscar Wilde at the table

In Wilde's London, high society dined "à la russe": dishes followed one after another, brought by servants, from soup to sweet entremets, each paired with its wine. In the afternoon, the ritual of five o'clock tea required tea, delicate sandwiches, and cakes; in the evening, after the theatre, a light supper of oysters and champagne was enjoyed. In Paris, exile added the café aperitif and the green fairy. This grammar of meals — tea, dinner in courses, supper, aperitif — structures the table of a dandy between Dublin, London, and Paris.

Wilde called champagne "the most civilized of drinks." A wine of celebration, supper, and provocation, it accompanies oysters, seals first triumphs, and marks the aesthetic art of living that he raised to a philosophy.