In the second half of the poem Horace moves on from the circumstances in which he opened this special wine to think about the effects of wine. On the one hand, he ascribes to it a pleasing mischievousness. It stimulates the wits of the dull (Horace has an interesting phrase for this — "lene tormentum", or mild torture), and it makes the secretive become candid. The power to bring the hidden to the surface is one of wine's disturbing gifts. 

But Horace also pays tribute to wine's ability to give solace. It restores hope, he says, to those whose minds are troubled ("mentibus anxiis"). More daringly, he says also that it gives strength and courage to the poor man, who after drinking wine trembles at neither the furious crowns of monarchs, nor the weapons of soldiers:

Viresque et addis cornua pauperi,

post te neque iratos trementi

regum apices neque militum arma.

This is not, I think, praise of Dutch courage. Horace suggests rather that the intrepidity sometimes conferred by wine can impel men down the path of genuine virtue — virtue which here is of an unmistakably republican complexion.