Steven Spurrier, the Brit who got California wines to be taken seriously, dies at 79
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Steven Spurrier in the Halls of Congress in 2016, on the 40th anniversary of the Judgment of Paris tasting.Lucy PopeShow MoreShow Less
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Steven Spurrier in the Halls of Congress in 2016, on the 40th anniversary of the Judgment of Paris tasting.Lucy PopeShow MoreShow Less
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Steven Spurrier, left, with French wine writer Michel Bettane in 2010.Saez VictorShow MoreShow Less
Steven Spurrier, who died Tuesday morning at age 79, was an unlikely champion for California wines. In 1976, the British wine merchant was running a shop in Paris that specialized in the great wines of France Burgundy, Bordeaux when he visited Napa Valley, at the time considered a podunk farming town.
The Académie du Vin Library, which Spurrier cofounded, announced the news.
It said in a short tribute, ‘He will always be remembered for founding the Académie du Vin, the celebrated Judgement of Paris and in recent years, the Académie du Vin Library and, together with his wife Bella, the Bride Valley Vineyard in Dorset, England – as well as much else besides.
‘He was also a hugely loved husband, father and grandfather. He will be sorely missed, not just by his immediate family and friends, but by people right across the world of wine.’
Spurrier’s contribution to the wine world has been vast, yet he will forever be associated with the famous Judgement of Paris tasting in 1976.
Timely highlights of wine writing make a literary buffet on which to feast
Brian St. Pierre reviews
(Académie du Vin Library; £25)
By now, in this plague year, most of us may be feeling more than a bit like the poor dupe in Edgar Allen Poe’s “A Cask of Amontillado,” walled into a wine-cellar’s alcove, maneuvered into claustrophobic isolation in an extreme of anti-social distancing, and frustrated at being unable to expansively share one of the best things ever created for expansive sharing. Denied wine’s bridge to gregariousness, “cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in to saucy doubts and fears,” as Macbeth once complained, we need an antidote, and rummaging around in this anthology of wine writing is a good one; it’s a set of keys to open the windows and let some sun shine in again.
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Timely highlights of wine writing make a literary buffet on which to feast
Brian St. Pierre reviews
(Académie du Vin Library; £25)
By now, in this plague year, most of us may be feeling more than a bit like the poor dupe in Edgar Allen Poe’s “A Cask of Amontillado,” walled into a wine-cellar’s alcove, maneuvered into claustrophobic isolation in an extreme of anti-social distancing, and frustrated at being unable to expansively share one of the best things ever created for expansive sharing. Denied wine’s bridge to gregariousness, “cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in to saucy doubts and fears,” as Macbeth once complained, we need an antidote, and rummaging around in this anthology of wine writing is a good one; it’s a set of keys to open the windows and let some sun shine in again.