Steven was one of the most kind, affable and charming people I ever knew. There was something eternally boyish, verging on Woosterish, about his enthusiasms not to mention his complete inability to ever say anything nasty about anybody. I would see him occasionally at tastings and before the plague, we would both meet twice a year at the Saintsbury Club for oenophiles – probably the only institution with an average age higher than that of the House of Lords. Steven got a worthy send off in the obituary pages and even managed to have an editorial written about him in The Times (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-times-view-on-the-life-of-steven-spurrier-judgment-of-paris-537fg0svt). One obit said he was “the unsung hero of wine”, which he was anything but – virtually every fine wine enthusiast around the globe knew and loved him. In the Summer of 1976, I spent a few weeks in Paris, eager to expand my nascent knowledge of wine, which had been put on hold during my years reporting in Indochina and South east Asia. There was a good range of vintage Bordeaux at Nicolas, not to mention their special list of 45 and 28 Bordeaux Second Growths for a mere F500 (£25) each. However, my loyalties switched after I stumbled over Les Caves de la Madeleine in an alley close to Fauchon. It was a quirky place run by Steven Spurrier, an Englishman, but what especially appealed to me was Ducru Beaucaillou '61 at F80 (£8) a bottle. I recall being bowled over after drinking it with a French journalist friend and his tricky mother, who reluctantly conceded it was “pas mal”. This was only two months after the Judgement of Paris event, which propelled Steven Spurrier to international notoriety, but I was completely unaware of it.
Steven Spurrier could hardly have imagined that he would soon be both famous and notorious for organising the most talked-about wine tasting in history. In a scrupulously fair event in 1976, Californian wines were voted superior to their French equivalents by nine of France’s leading wine experts. The French wine industry was left reeling. As Spurrier’s wife, Bella, surmised: “There goes your Légion d’Honneur.”
As with many of the key moments in his career, Steven’s presence in Paris was not part of a grand plan. Thanks to the inheritance of a large fortune in his twenties, in 1969 he had purchased a property with an unmodernised farmhouse in Provence where he had hoped to start an antiques business. When the project was abandoned due to spiralling costs, he could not face returning to London, so he headed to Paris and purchased Les Caves de la Madeleine, an old-fashioned wine shop close to Fauchon and Hédiard, then the leading food shops in Paris. The widow who owned Les Caves was initially sceptical that this young Englishman could maintain the standards she and her late husband had set so he offered to work with her unpaid for six months to show his serious intent. By the end of the six months, she was won over and immediately after Spurrier took complete control, he placed an advertisement in the International Herald Tribune announcing that “Your wine merchant speaks English”. It took off with the large English-speaking expatriate community as well as curious Parisians.
Patricia Gallagher, his young American assistant, thought it would be a good idea to celebrate the forthcoming 1976 American Bicentenary with a tasting of Californian wines. Even though most French oenophiles had never tried them, they assumed New World wines to be at best promising, but poor imitations of the great bottles of France.
After visiting California and painstakingly tasting at the leading boutique wineries, six chardonnays and six cabernet sauvignons were chosen. They were dispatched to Paris as hand luggage of a French group touring Napa Valley. This was necessary to avoid French Customs, who could prove obstructive as they had trouble comprehending that wine was actually produced in the USA. None of these Californian wines were available in France. Nine of France’s leading figures in the wine world participated, from Aubert de Villaine, the co-proprietor of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti to Christian Vannequé, the head sommelier of La Tour d'Argent.
The results were dramatic — Californian wines were voted top in both red and white categories. Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars ’73 and Chateau Montelena ’73 had triumphed over Château Mouton-Rothschild ’70 and Meursault-Charmes Roulot ’73. One judge was so shocked she unsuccessfully demanded to withdraw her votes. She also declared “It was a false test because California wines are trying to become too much like French wines.” Aubert de Villaine is said to have commented ‘On a pris un coup de pied dans la derrière.’ (We took a kick up the rear).
Steven himself was quite surprised as he had expected the American wines to come a respectable fourth or fifth overall. There was no interest in the event before the result: only one journalist, George Taber, from Time magazine, had turned up, but they promptly called it the Judgment of Paris. Since then, George Taber wrote a book about it and Hollywood made a film based on the tasting — Bottle Shock starring Alan Rickman as Steven, who found the film “deeply insulting”. Eric Asimov, the New York Times wine editor, remarked “While it’s ostensibly about wine “Bottle Shock’’ has a lot more in common with a beer commercial.”
Rather than admit it had been a fair fight, some of the critics said French wines were slower to develop but subsequent blind tastings with the same wines 10 and even 30 years later, still resulted in Californian wines coming out top. Steven briefly became persona non grata in French wine circles while some of the critics were accused of treason by their colleagues. As for the credibility and sales of Californian wines, it had an immediate and lasting impact, but mainly in the United States and the rest of the world, rather than France.
However, Aubert de Villaine thinks the Judgement of Paris had a profound effect on French wine beyond the competitive aspect. He told me "The Paris Tasting is always presented as a victory of California wines versus some great French wines and commented as such, when, for me, its most important consequence, which is not much spoken about, is the impact it had on the French wines, especially Burgundy. It made us realize that competition existed, that other regions of the world could make great wines and that we were ourselves often failing to express all the potential of our terroirs…We had to go back to work! It is exactly what happened. The Paris Tasting is of course not the only factor but it is one factor that had its importance to help lead us to a level of quality, in Burgundy at least, that could not even be imagined in the ‘70s!"
While the Judgment of Paris is indelibly linked to Steven and his reputation, he also made an important contribution through his creation of L’Académie du Vin, France’s first private wine school, and later the Christie’s Wine Course in London. Equally important is the impact he has made on people in the wine trade, with countless stories recounted of his helpfulness and eagerness to promote obscure wines throughout the globe. However, as he noted before he died, “None of my wine ventures has ever made money”.
He was also the best-dressed person in the British wine trade, with tailor-made Tommy Nutter suits, usually with one of his 30 Turnbull & Asser handkerchiefs in the top pocket. His reputation as a committed bon viveur was furthered by such caprices as installing a portable refrigerator in the boot of his sports car to keep his champagne cool or taking a hamper of foie gras and grouse, along with a bottle of 1945 Bordeaux, to a friend languishing in Brixton prison.
While at the London School of Economics, he joined the university wine society and confessed to spending more time learning to cook in his Belgravia flat than studying. Even so, he did manage to graduate in 1963 with second class honours. Although he was keen to enter the wine trade, no positions were available so he ended up selling encyclopaedias. While bemoaning his fate in a Knightsbridge restaurant where the lobster was especially cheap, a young man at a neighbouring table proffered his card and invited him to visit him at the wine merchants Christopher & Co in Jermyn Street. While not as well-known as Berry Bros or Justerini & Brooks, Christopher’s had the oldest pedigree of them all, claiming to have only been in Jermyn Street “since the Fire”.
During this period his grandfather had died, leaving him £250,000, equivalent now to about £6 million, which was his share of the proceeds from the sale of his business, which had provided gravel for the construction of the M1 motorway.
After several months in the cellars of Christopher’s, Spurrier decided to spend the following year working at wine estates in France, Germany, Spain and Portugal. Because of his inheritance, he offered to do so at his own expense, which meant he was frequently invited to dine with the proprietors and further his education in fine wine.
On his return to London, no position was offered at Christopher’s, though he found another job with a wine merchant. In the meantime he was busy burning through his inheritance, investing in restaurants, nightclubs and even films. He wore Carnaby Street styles, partied at Annabel’s and met Jimi Hendrix. He later confessed that “A lot of money was stolen from me . . . People who had ideas and no money found me an easy touch.”
In 1968 he married Bella Lawson and after an alcohol-fuelled reception, they took the Golden Arrow from Victoria Station to Paris for their honeymoon. His mother had packed a hamper along with a bottle of Château Pape-Clément ’53 for the journey while his father thoughtfully booked two first class cabins so they had one to be sick in and another for the remainder of the journey.
After the failure of their Provençal adventure, Spurrier decided to try his luck in Paris, where he found a large barge on the Seine moored opposite the Gare d’Orsay, which was extensively refurbished and remained their floating home for the next two years. With the success of the Judgment of Paris, Les Caves de la Madeleine thrived, as did his neighbouring Académie du Vin, which extended its scope to include tastings from all important wine regions in France. Things started to go wrong in the early Eighties, with one thieving staff member forcing one of his restaurants into bankruptcy.
A move to New York in 1981 ended badly in less than a year, with poor investments and family illness, so it was back to London. Shortly after his return Michael Broadbent, head of Christie’s wine department, asked Spurrier to set up a wine course, which he ran for the next 30 years. Later ventures such as his Académie du Vin ventures in Italy and India failed to gain traction, though his Japanese outpost still survives.
In 1985 Steven had begun writing a regular wine column in Tatler and also published several books about French wine. However, his French enterprises were now losing money and ultimately all went to pay off growing debts and tax demands. Other opportunities arose, including an appointment as wine consultant for Singapore Airlines.
In 1991 he began another job as head of the wine department of Harrods, but that only lasted for six months as Mohammed Fayed resented that Steven gained more publicity than he did. Shortly afterwards Steven was at a wine industry trade ball, when Sarah Kemp, the managing director of Decanter magazine, asked him how he was liking Harrods. When he replied “I’ve been fired”, she offered him a position as consultant editor and later to be their chief Bordeaux taster.
He then settled into the pattern he maintained for the rest of his life — attending tastings and dinners all over the world and writing a regular wine column in Decanter. In 2004 he also created Decanter’s World Wine Awards, which has evolved into the world’s largest wine competition. Spurrier was always curious to try new wine regions, whether they were in Lebanon, Slovenia, Georgia or China.
In 2008 he decided to plant 20 acres of vineyards on his farm in Dorset, which is now marketed as Bride Valley Dorset sparkling wine. A decade later, he launched a publishing house called Académie du Vin Library, which publishes books on wine and the wine trade.
In his last interview in December, reflecting on current wine writing, he said: “There is too much useless information — too much hype and too much concentration on value for money rather than value for pleasure.” He added that he hated “show off wines”, preferred wines that expressed rather than impressed, and that he was becoming more partial to the Sangiovese grape in Tuscany’s Chianti and Brunello di Montalcino. However, Bordeaux remained the bedrock of his personal cellar and his own taste. When asked for his favourite Bordeaux of all time, he included a Lafite 1806, Margaux 85 (one of my favourites too) and a jereboam of Chateau d’Yquem 1988. Steven revealed to a friend just before he died: "Dear Boy, since my twenties, I have drunk at least a litre of wine every day of my life".
While wine was the prime focus of his professional life, he remained passionate about art, which he started collecting in his late teens. “Wine has been my life but art has been an addictive hobby,” he said. “Art means more to me emotionally than wine — there’s no contest.” He also believed “there are three important things in life: someone to love, something to do and something to look forward to”. He is survived by his wife, Bella, son, Christian, a writer, and daughter, Kate, an accountant.
In his final weekend, surrounded by art in his bedroom in Dorset, he told Jancis Robinson, an old friend: “I was a privileged boy and I had a lot of luck. But I have loved wine — and art — all my life, and the wonderful people I have been lucky enough to meet and perhaps inspire.’”
Steven Spurrier, wine expert, was born on October 5, 1941. He died of cancer on March 9, 2021, aged 79
A shorter version of this obituary appeared in The Times
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/steven-spurrier-obituary-j3rcmz7bx
A life in Wine by Steven Spurrier (2020) https://academieduvinlibrary.com
Wine – a way of Life by Steven Spurrier
(Adelphi 2018)
A lengthier version of the Academie du Vin version – allegedly poorly edited but it has far more amusing and diversionary material in it.