ProverbMoralityEnglish origin

Good wine needs no bush.

Meaning: Excellent quality requires no advertisement; genuine merit speaks for itself without promotional effort.

Origin: Taverns once hung a bunch of ivy — a "bush," the plant of the wine god Bacchus — outside the door as a sign that wine was sold within. A good wine, the proverb says, needs no advertising. Rosalind uses it in the epilogue of Shakespeare's As You Like It: "If it be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true that a good play needs no epilogue."

Equivalents in French, Spanish, Japanese, German, Italian, and 3 more languages

  • French: À bon vin, point d'enseigne (literally: Good wine needs no sign)
  • Spanish: Vino que es bueno no ha menester pregonero (literally: Good wine needs no crier)
  • Japanese: 桃李もの言わざれども下自ら蹊を成す (Tōri mono iwazaredomo shita mizukara komichi o nasu) (literally: Though the peach and plum trees say nothing, a path forms beneath them of itself)
  • German: Guter Wein bedarf keines Kranzes (literally: Good wine needs no wreath)
  • Italian: A buon vino non bisogna frasca (literally: Good wine needs no bush)
  • Dutch: Goede wijn behoeft geen krans (literally: Good wine needs no wreath)
  • Russian: Хороший товар сам себя хвалит (Khoroshiy tovar sam sebya khvalit) (literally: Good goods praise themselves)
  • Polish: Dobry towar sam się chwali (literally: Good goods praise themselves)

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