I had the distcint honor to know Melvin Masters; responsible for some iconic imported brands of wine that you would see everywhere. Unfortunately, we lost him a year or two ago and I has saddened me ever since.
As a friend, he would reach out to his A-list of friends to encourage them to come on the podcast. Literally, just weeks before Steven Spurrier, yes, the one and the same of the famed Steven Spurrier, came on the show. I was humbled and honored.
Stephen Spurrier was never one to swirl around the status quo—he preferred to shake the bottle and see what poured out. In this captivating episode of Wine Talks, you will gain a front-row seat to the origins and aftermath of the iconic 1976 Judgment of Paris, as told by the man who orchestrated it all. Spurrier, ever the adventurer, recounts his youthful, risk-taking days in France with a mischievous twinkle, transforming a Parisian wine shop into an international hub and launching L’Academie du Vin, all before single-handedly upending the world’s assumptions about French supremacy in wine. Listeners will peel back the layers on his unlikely journey: from London’s wine trade to the sun-drenched vineyards of Provence, onto the gilded streets of Paris—where, armed with little more than entrepreneurial zest and a deep love for French culture, he made his mark. You will eavesdrop on the serendipitous conversations, chance encounters, and contrarian choices that led to the famous blind tasting; witness the cultural tremors it sent through both California and France; and learn the lasting impact it had, not just on wine markets, but on how the world approaches tasting and educating itself about wine. Along the way, Spurrier’s stories will reveal why he believed communication, trust, and story are the true soul of a great bottle, why the legacy of the Judgment of Paris is less about winners or losers and more about opening doors for unknown regions everywhere, and what he thinks about today’s wine trends, from natural wines to screw caps and beyond. Prepare to uncork more than just the tale of a contest—you’ll understand what it takes to change an industry and kindle a global love affair with wine, one bold decision at a time.
✅ Ever wondered how a single tasting changed the world of wine forever?
✅ Hear the inside story of the legendary 1976 Judgment of Paris—the day California wines stunned the French—told by the man who organized it himself.
✅ On this can't-miss episode of Wine Talks, host Paul K sits down with Stephen Spurrier for a revealing dive into wine history, risk-taking, and what really matters in your glass.
✅ Don’t miss the episode that uncorks the secrets behind modern wine, why storytelling trumps scoring, and how your next bottle could make history. Listen now and become part of the conversation! 🍷
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Now, from high atop his desk, get
ready to peel it all back and
get to the root of the subject, no pun
intended, with Paul K
On winetalks,
where he takes no prisoners and calls it
(00:26):
the way he sees it.
Hey, welcome. Welcome to Wine Talks with Paul Kay. We are
available on Google Play, Spotify, itunes, Apple Play, wherever you
guys hang out for your podcasting. And today we are just going
to continue with our Judgment of Paris series. And this is.
I'm honored, I'm privileged, I'm humbled to have with us
(00:50):
what would I say, the architect of what could have been or is
the greatest thing that ever happened to California wine or American wine for that matter.
But really, when you talk about modern times of wine
consumption, there are three things that have happened. Two of
them are dealt with consumption and the primary one, which is the
Judgment of Paris here in 1976, changed the world of wine.
(01:13):
And we have with us Mr. Stephen Spurrier, all the way from Dorset,
England. Welcome to the show. Thank you very
much, Paul. We have so much to talk about. I don't think we can
do it in the 45 minutes that we allocate for this. It doesn't matter. I
got all the time in the world. We're going to have some fun. I wanted
to start with this because we're going to get into the bowels of the Judgment
(01:34):
of Paris, and there's so much press and there's things to talk about. And I've
had George Tabor on the show. I've had Violet Grgich. Mr. Barrett's coming on,
Bowes coming on. You know, there's a lot of history. We'll talk about that soon.
But I want to talk about the first sentence of the book. The first
sentence of the book says, on an Autumn Day in 1970, two, Englishmen
were walking around Paris's posh Right bank near Rue
(01:55):
Royale. Why were two Englishmen walking
around the Right bank and rue Royale in 1970?
How did you get there? Well, I think
I got married. Well, let's start at the start. I joined the
London wine trade in 1964. I'd always
(02:16):
wanted to go into the wine trade. I'm a
younger son, and in
England, the elder brother inherits everything. Yeah. So
I know that, too. That stopped a bit now. So, I
mean, we were a privileged family, so there was money around.
And while I always envied my elder brother
(02:38):
his security, he always envied my independence. Yes.
After university and that. I joined the wine trade in
64 and got married in
early 68. And because of the money
and my love of France, which was already deep inside me,
I bought a property with a ruin on it in the
(03:02):
Department Duval down in the south of France.
And so my wife and I, the day of our marriage, the evening of
our marriage, we took our first class carriages,
the golden arrow at Victoria, to go to Paris and
to start our life in France. Just like that. Just like
that. Well, I mean I didn't
(03:25):
pass it on at the ceremony, but for the
first few years of our life, whenever I
gave an idea to my wife, she said, well, why not, let's do it. And
unfortunately, when I started the vineyard here about
10 years ago, she said, yeah, why not? As long as you pay for it.
Yeah. A vineyard in England no less. Right.
(03:48):
There I was in Provence. And we tried to rebuild the ruin.
We got ripped off. We were far too young, but we
had a good time in Provence. And it was, you know,
I was 26 and she was 21 and we
discovered, well, we had a good time
and. But then we knew after two years it wasn't going to
(04:11):
work. So we'd have to go through
a total emigration, I mean
non residents change of residence through the bank of England
because the taxes in England were so horrendous. And we
didn't leave to avoid taxes, but we went through
the system which permitted us to
(04:34):
sort of no longer be considered English
residents. And so Bella, my wife said,
okay, well it's not worked hard. Should we go back to London? Because we
kept our heist there. And I said no, I'm not going back to London
with my tail between my legs. Let's go to Paris and I'll go back
into the wine trade. So we moved to Paris and that was where
(04:56):
white two gentlemen were walking around the Rue Royale
in September 1970. And there was no wine
trade. There was no wine trade in the way that I knew it in London.
Of course there wasn't, there's no reason why there should have been. So there was
no possibility I could have gotten a job
as an Englishman speaking adequate but not very good
(05:18):
French on and so forth. And with my friend who was a lawyer
in the next door, next door block, we passed a wine shop,
little wine shop called the Carvel in Madeleine. And I
said to Christopher, I said, that's my dream, a little shop like
that. I know exactly what I could do with it and that's my
(05:39):
absolute dream. So he dragged me in and I
looked around and eventually the owner,
a sophisticated lady said may I sell you something?
And my Friend said, yes, my friend. My friend
would like to buy your shop. And she said,
actually, it's for sale. So we talked about
(06:02):
it and we discussed it
and the price was set. But then what's
interesting, and it's sort of almost been a pattern in my life,
she got second thoughts because her husband had been a
very good Calviste. He'd been a very good wine merchant, and he
got cancer and he died two years previously. And she was
(06:25):
just holding the fort. And she didn't see
how a young Englishman could honor
the reputation of her husband, of her late
husband. So I said, okay, Madam Future, here's the deal.
We're coming up to October 1st. I'll work for you for
free for six months. And if you think I can honor your
(06:47):
husband's memory, we'll do the deal. If not.
If not, not. So on April 1, which was still April
Fool's Day in Paris, they call it the Poisson. I was going to ask that
question, actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it only runs until midday.
April 1, 1971. She gave me the keys to the cash
(07:07):
desk and I took it over. Now, in those six months,
I'd learned much better French. I knew exactly what
I wanted to do with the shop. I was already. I got to know the
clientele. We were in what was called the Golden Triangle,
the Place La Madeleine, the Rue Royale, the Boulevard Malesherbes,
all that kind of stuff. And Paris was much more
(07:31):
international in those days than it is now. All the American banks were there,
all the American and English law firms were there, and they were all in
the eighth. And so I had this English clientele
basically at my feet. But
Madame Fougere had never, because she didn't speak English, had never
thought about them. So the day I took it over,
(07:55):
I placed an ad in the Herald Tribune which said,
your wine merchant speaks English. Ring Steven Spiderman.
What a benefit, right? And that's really how it began. And
so within, I mean, I did, I have to admit, I didn't know what I
was doing. And we
were bottling Vaude Neur at the time. And I got rid of all that
(08:17):
I didn't intend to sell Vaudinaire. And the
supplier of the inexpensive but inexpensive
va ordinaire said, monsieur Espilier, you're going to lose half your
clientele. I said, that's the half I want to lose. So
it was, I mean, I was young and,
(08:37):
you know, a bit of a dreamer. You said something, though, that what you've done,
I mean, I'm going back Just from when you moved to France.
And I'm from a family of immigrants. My father immigrated to America in
1949, my grandfather, my grandmother, et cetera.
You know, this is a risk. And if you read about Mike Girgich in the,
in the book, and he comes From Croatia with $32, did
(08:59):
you consider this a risk when you just picked up and left with your wife
and moved to the Provence? And then once you decided to do that, was it
even. No, no, we had, we had tremendous. I mean, we.
I had kept. Because I was moving to
an address with a house on it, even though it was a ruined
house. We kept our four
(09:21):
story house in Chelsea. Yeah. So.
And there was a bit of money on both sides
and we were young and
adventurous, but we were totally secure financially. There was
no risk.
There was no financial risk. It never occurred to us
(09:45):
because we didn't actually.
I'm certainly not going to say we had more money than we needed. It's not
that. But we didn't actually think of financial
stuff at that time. So you pick up, you move to Paris, you find
this unbelievable store. And I love the Van
Odonaire conversation because it says in the book, you're wheeling
(10:07):
barrels around. You know, in those days you could do that, right.
You could come in with your carafe or your bottles or your. Whatever they call
it and you can fill it up. And you could do that in America at
that time too. You can't do it now. But you had an idea
then that this store was going to be more classical, let's say
English merchant. And I'm interested to know why you think
(10:29):
in Paris at that time that there wasn't a wine trade of
to sort of. There wasn't a wine store in every corner, maybe like they would.
There was, there was, there
was a Nicolas store. Oh, yeah, he's a famous guy.
Yeah. But I mean, they were brilliant stores. They had wines going back to the
19th century. I mean, they were fantastic. Wow. But they
(10:51):
were, they. But then there were a lot of independent stores that were
known as Carviste. And then there were three or four real top wine
merchants. There was Jean Baptiste Bess, Jean Baptiste Chaudet,
both on the Left bank, and Lucien Le grand on the Right Bank. And
it was Le grand that I became particularly friendly and did
quite a lot of stuff with. But then Paris was. And then there were the
(11:14):
luxury stores like Fauchon and Ediyard. So Paris was
certainly not a backwater in terms of wine.
I would say that the consumers, the Parisians Themselves
were backwaters because they drank a lot of rubbish
and they were not terribly. They were more concerned
(11:34):
with the price of the bottle than what it tasted like. And I guess
that was what I was determined
to change. Every single wine I bought for the shop was
a wine where I knew the producer. I'd been to the estate,
and I drink it myself. So
(11:54):
that was. And I never sold wine. I just said, try this,
you'll like it. And it worked. That's interesting because
we're going to talk about this later, because once we get to the Judgment of
Paris story itself, but we're kind of confronted with that in
the industry right now. And I've said this many times on the show, but
people are bringing in €1 per liter wines in America, bottling
(12:17):
them under a bunch of labels, putting. Put him on Groupon for three or four
dollars. And it's kind of interesting that we're going
back. Seems like there's a part of
consumption that seems to be going backwards, and then
we're trying to get it to go forward. So we'll talk about that when I
get the judgment of Paris.
(12:37):
So we have this store and you've now are establishing this
American and English clientele. So, you know, I'm
a huge fan of Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable
Feast, you know, which sets in the twenties in Paris. It seems so
romantic. The movie A Midnight in Paris is kind
of focused on that. And you said that it was not as international.
(13:00):
It is more international then than it is today. That's. No, no, no. There
were more. Paris was still very, very French. I
see. Basically I had IBM. The whole
offices of IBM were in the street next door. Street to
me. But the
average Parisian did not speak English. So although all the
(13:22):
international companies were there,
it was. It was not an international
city like. Like London has become and like Paris is now.
And with the. With my Anglo Saxon clientele, I
certainly kept my French clientele. And the shop
(13:43):
was expanding. They used to drop by in the
evenings and taste a glass of wine or two. And
I used to talk them through it. And
one of them, they were in a law firm in the Place de
Madeleine. He said, you know, if you
could ever put this in a structured manner, we'd love to learn about wine,
(14:05):
because we don't know anything about wine. And the place next door,
which was a locksmith and I don't know what the hell you want a locksmith
in the middle of Paris for. But anyway, it was a locksmith
on two floors came up for sale And I made a bid
for it at the bankruptcy auction and I got it
and founded l' Academy du Vin. Now, what's interesting,
(14:29):
I wasn't going to call it l' Academy du Vin. I wanted to call it
Lambassade du Vin because I thought of myself as an ambassador
for wine and not an educator. But
Lambassade du Vin had been taken by someone else, and l' Academie
du Vin, being such a. I suppose a grand name, had
not. So hence l' Academie du Vin was formed, which
(14:51):
was the first privately owned wine school in France,
run by an American friend of mine called John Winroth and myself.
And basically, that is
the base, the kernel of the Judgment of Paris.
Had there been no Academy du Vin, the Judgment of Paris would not
have. Happened, which is fascinating because George says
(15:14):
that's how he learned about it. Yeah,
he was doing a wine course with us. But the thing is that. So
I opened in late 72,
early 73, in
October 72, an American lady who'd been working
on the Herald Tribune, who had become a
(15:38):
client of the shop came to see me and
she saw what was going on next door and she said, what's that? I said,
it's going to be a wine school. She said, well,
would you like anyone to help you with it? And I said, well, I think
that's a great idea because we could use the help. I'm running the
shop and. Sure. So Patricia Gallagher was American
(16:01):
and she. Her family had come over,
you know, in the late 1600s. She wasn't one of the
earliest, but they came over on the east coast where she
still. Her family still has roots and
she was very proud of being American and not in
a. In a show off sense, but she was proud of her roots. And
(16:23):
so every 4th of July, you know, from
73, 74, 75 onwards, she tried to find American wine in
Paris and couldn't because maybe Fauchon had Almaden or
something. But then what was most important, because
we had the wine school and we had a big tasting room and we
spoke English and we were bang in the middle of Paris.
(16:46):
California vintner's producers and the journalists
like Robert Finnegan and Alexis Bespalov
came to the shop, came to La Cabaret de Vine,
and the California producers brought their wine.
And I'd never tasted California wine before.
(17:07):
Patricia had not tasted California wine of that quality before.
And it was entirely due to Patricia that
the idea came
that we should hold a tasting of these wines to
simply draw attention to the quality coming out of
California. Totally
(17:30):
altruistic. And we'd given tastings, I mean, we'd given
tastings of Australian wine from the Australian
embassy, Spanish wine from the Spanish embassy. We were, you know,
basically the only game in town who ever thought
of non French wine. And but this was.
Patricia took this to another plane and she had vacation
(17:52):
in September. 75, she went to San Francisco.
Robert Finnegan marked her card a bit. She went to Marta Lena, she went
to Stag's Leap, she went all over the place. And she came back
saying, it's extraordinary, we must do this. And I said,
okay, Patricia, that's fine, we'll do it.
But you insist. We need a peg to hang it on.
(18:16):
And because this is going to be a bigger
thing and it's a risk, it's
not just a one off tasting. We're trying to achieve something here. We're not just
showing a range of wines from Spain. And so we need
a raison d' etre. And she said, I've got the perfect
raison d' etre. 76 is the bicentennial of the
(18:39):
War of Independence. Wow, I've never heard
that connection. And I said, well, you know, we Brits don't really celebrate
having lost the colony, but I'll go along with that.
And so that was Patricia's idea. And so once we got the peg
and it was totally altruistic, we then began to invite
the tasters. We got over
(19:02):
to Valerie and you've got all the tastes, all their names in George's book. And
we were very well known. We were. Well, we were well known, we were highly
respected, we were very much liked. We never put our hand out
for any sponsorship or any freebies. And so
the tasters, all of whom we knew, well,
we knew most of them. We. I didn't know
(19:25):
Raymond Oliver, the chef at the Grand Ver four. I
didn't know Pierre Brejoux from the Institut des Applasses controller.
But you know, it was an invitation from Academy Dauphin to taste
California wine. So they all ticked the box and said yes. So May
24th rolled along. I went to
California with my wife over Easter, which was in
(19:48):
April, to make a final selection. And we had six
Chardonnays and six Cabernet based wines.
And thanks to Joanne Dupuis, who is
bringing a group of 22 people, a wine and tennis
group, she hand carried the wines because I wouldn't have been able to get
24 bottles through the French customs
(20:11):
on my own. So Joanne really kind of
facilitated the tasting in that sense. And
I gave a tasting for her group, which included Andre
Cheliceff and Louis Martini and really all the great and the good,
but the senior members of the California wine
establishment at La Canada du Vin.
(20:33):
But a week or so
before the tasting, it occurred to me that with the
exception of Aubrey de Vilain, who was married to a girl from
San Francisco, Pamela, nobody
to my knowledge would have ever tasted California wine before.
And I was worried that. Why would they? Yeah,
(20:57):
well, I think Christoph Vaniquet, who was the youngest chef sommelier in
Paris at the Tour d' Argent, he almost certainly would have
done, but I. But basically the
other tasters, many of whom were of, you know,
a certain age, and I was afraid
that however much they appreciated the quality,
(21:19):
they would kind of damn the wines with
faint praise like, oh, c' est pas mal.
And it would go off like a damp squid.
And I couldn't risk that. And I
proposed to Patricia that I put the four best
white Burgundy's and the four best red Bordeaux from my shop
(21:43):
into the tasting and make it a blind tasting. And she said,
you can't do that because they're not coming to a blind tasting, they're
not coming to a competition. They're coming to taste California
wines. I said, well, I'm going to do it anyway.
And so what? The wines are in George's book. Bata
Marache, Pune Marache. There was no.
(22:06):
They were really chosen. And also the vintages match too. They were
chosen just so the California wines,
if they slipped through in maybe a third or a
fifth, they would at least have got recognition vis a vis
the benchmarks of France. And we
chose them in a random order. I just put the names of
(22:31):
the wines on a bit of paper, screwed up the bit of paper.
Somebody took the piece of paper out of the hat. So the order of service
is random. The wines were served one by one,
which would not happen today. They would be left on the table. So you go
backwards and forwards. And when the tasters turned up,
I said, you have been invited just to taste California
(22:53):
wines. And I thought it would be interesting to make it a blind
tasting with the benchmark
wines from Burgundy and from Bordeaux.
And do you agree? And they said, yes. Yeah.
Pourquoi pas? Yeah. And so why
would they not? And sort of the rest is. The rest is history.
(23:15):
But it was a series of. The
idea was Patricia's, the whole package was
Patricia's. But I just
didn't want to take the risk of it going off as a damp squib.
And so, you know, we made it a
blind tasting. With the results, which, I mean, no one was
(23:36):
more surprised than me, but you'll see from George's
book, Chateau Martinez, six tasters put that top
and three tasters put it second. My bet was Charlotte. The three
tasters put shallow in second. But I thought Charlene was going to, was going to
come. Yeah, richer usually. Yeah, yeah. So. And then
of course the results of the whites were
(23:59):
divulged while all the whites were being cleared away. And that
created a little consternation, of course.
No, not so bad. Not shock horror. But I think
certain tasters, nameless, were
determined that it wouldn't happen again. And if
you look at the rankings out of 20 in the
(24:22):
reds, certain wines get two and four out of 20.
Well, you don't give that kind of mark.
So I think the tasters who gave those marks
recognized them as California, quite correct,
complete to slam them. And so it's always been in the back of
my mind that stag's leap from four year
(24:44):
old vines, 100% cabernet sauvignon
with Andrzej Tszedichev as a wine advisor
was so elegant and
un burley, so elegant that a
lot of the tasters thought it was French. And I think
(25:07):
they gave it a good look. It came top. I've run the
numbers backwards and forwards everywhere you want. Stagsley
still comes top. And
I think it, it was the only of one of
the California wines which had, which
could have possibly been mistaken for French. So that's just.
(25:29):
But doesn't that even, doesn't even buck the idea in
modern winemaking that you can't make a decent wine from that first
vintage of the first four or five, you know, harvests of grapes.
I think that's rubbish and apparently. Well, no,
no, I mean, I think that's rubbish because I mean, the vines are there
(25:50):
to produce grapes and that's what they want to do. And you
can produce grapes and make wine in the Trois
and feuille in a third leaf. So
this is a 73 and Warren had planted
in 1970. So actually they were in the
1771 70, so they were in their fourth leaf. So this was
(26:13):
basically their second vintage. But I don't think Warren had.
Anyway, if he'd made a 72, I didn't know about it.
My bet for the reds was Ridge and ridge, eventually
in 2006, ended up wiping the floor with everything. But
it was an absolute fair
(26:33):
blind tasting, as George recorded. And all
the tasters, without exception, when they got
back to where they lived in Bordeaux Or Burgundy or wherever,
got a really hard time of having betrayed France.
And not a single one of them mentioned that to me until
the 30th anniversary in 2006.
(26:58):
And those of them who were still alive said, you
know, Stephen, we can tell you now, but we really suffered.
Wow. I can imagine. There wasn't supposed to happen.
Pierre Brejou, who was the
director of the Institut des Appellacieux Controlles, was
asked to resign. And Pierre Tarry
(27:21):
of Charda Giscol, who was the mayor of Margaux, suggested he
resign as may. All this kind of stuff
they never told me because they knew that
the tasting had been held in honest
circumstances. Well, tell me about the. I want to read you something in a second,
but tell me then, because this is. I've read this many times about.
(27:44):
I think the wine trade in Bordeaux in the 70s was suffering a
little bit of a dip. There was some. I know that
Bordeaux was classically English trade.
Basically you would bottle in England or you would, you know, they had control of
the negociant status. Was that a
real thing at the time? By
(28:05):
76 they were fine. They were fine, okay. But the big scandal was
the Cruz scandal was 73. 72, 73, the
seven days war or whatever, the. Well, Melvin, our friend
Melvin, he lost everything in 72,
73. So they had recovered. The
72 vintage was terrible. The 73 vintage wasn't too bad.
(28:27):
Bordeaux had recovered by 76. It wasn't
economically very secure, but they weren't suffering as they had been
three or four years previously. But they didn't need the
competition. They did not need to be told that
Catholic from Napa Valley had beaten them.
That's not going to help. Let me. I want to read you something from my
(28:49):
dad. This is my father's newsletter. August 76. He
says he actually. He reprints the column from the
Time magazine, June 7, Time magazine. But then he writes, we received the
official results from Mr. Spurrier's Lacademie Devant
25 Rue Royale Paris and reproduce them here for
you. The 20 point system was used and the results are shown as total
(29:11):
points. The tastings were held blind. And then he
lists the winners and goes on. This is a remarkable accomplishment for Jim Barrett
of Chateau Montelena and for Warren Woodiarski of Stag Sleep. Jim is a local
palace for these resident and a practicing attorney of Torrance,
spends his weekends at the winery. Warren has been a friend of the palace radies,
wines and spirits as Jim has and gives us a visit whenever he's in town
(29:33):
now. I learned. I mean, I knew Mr. Barrett was a local person. I used
to surf with the youngest son, Kevin, and the
older brother Beau, now is the owner and winemaker. But
I didn't know Warren Winiarski slept in my brother's room when
he came into town. And that just befuddled me. But then, and
I'm just taking you back just for a second, chapter 16 of the
(29:56):
book. I want you to just reflect on this. Chapter 16 of the book
starts with. In the summer of 1975, Patricia Gallagher was
making plans to visit her sister and Palace Verdes Estates, the
wealthy coastal communities such as south of Los Angeles,
goes on to talk about your relationship with her. So I told this,
my father, he's 92 now, and this is about, I don't know, a few weeks
(30:19):
ago, I told him I visit him, he's in San Diego. I said, dad,
this is what it says in the book. He says, oh, yeah, she came into
the store. I go, what do you mean? He says, well, she came in,
introduced herself and said what she was doing. Not just
not about the Judgment of Paris in the sense of a contest, that she was
looking for some California wines. And it kind of jives
(30:40):
because back then in la, there were only really five
stores that had any premium wine selections. My father's, Duke of
Bourbon, Wally's and a couple others. And it just turns
out that Patricia Gallagher's sister lives in Palos Verres Estates. So
I find this connection kind of intriguing for me and.
And I wanted to tell the story that, you know,
(31:03):
I want to continue the story of the Judgment of Paris for younger
wine drinkers to understand, you know, how all this came about. George says to
me in his interview, well, I think California wines would
have eventually made their way into the world scene. Five or ten years later,
I'm like, yeah, but we wouldn't be having this conversation
because it was an event. It was a turning event. And it.
(31:26):
The migration, a slow migration of California wines into the world of wine would have
been uninteresting. But this event made it interesting.
I mean, I think it was. Well, Warren Winiarski said
the telephone rang off the hook. He couldn't sell his wine on the East
Coast. That's right. So the
telephone rang off the hook. And it was an event which people discussed. It got
(31:49):
so much press. And it was an event which
I redid it 10 years later in New York with
Sassy Sheen and Bartholomew Broadbent and a real top
class panel. And that confirmed the quality
of California reds. Because the Bordelayer said, you tasted
(32:09):
our wines far too young. Well, that was proved.
That wasn't proved. And the California wines had a
stronger showing in 86. Yes. 30 years later,
20 years, an even. Stronger showing in
2006. But
it was quite plainly a controversial event.
(32:31):
And when you have a controversial event, people discuss it.
And I think that is what gave the impetus
to California wine. Gave the impetus because
it kept on being discussed. You know what's fascinating
to me, too, particularly with today's modern techniques,
and you've got these electronic sorting tables, and they can throw the lizards off
(32:54):
of the stems as they come through the sorting table, these crazy technology.
But you have these phenomenal wines that were made in just
what I would call classical winemaking techniques. You had a
refractometer, maybe, and hydrometer, but
you weren't doing all these analysis. It was about phenolic ripeness and all
(33:14):
these things. And here are these gorgeous wines. In fact,
Peter Mondavi was saying it, that the Krug, I don't know,
49 or 52 or something, you know, was scored very
highly recently. How do you. The.
Andrei Cheliceff's Pinot Noirs that he made
in the mid-40s at Berlioz,
(33:38):
some of the greatest wines I've ever had. Wow. They are, I mean,
just unbelievable.
And that was a tasting that I did with a whole bunch of people in
1979. But, I mean, they were made as
natural products without all this hoo ha.
(33:59):
Now, about natural wines, yes, they were made in a natural manner.
And as Hubert de Vilain, who is asked so often
how he manages to make such wonderful wines,
he just says, we pick the grapes when they're ripe and do nothing.
Which seems like the right way to do it now, isn't it? Yeah, it seems
like the right way to do it. But I think I'd like to bring up
(34:22):
a point which to me is absolutely
key, is that whatever the
judgment of Paris did for California, and we all know what it did,
it did more for the international world of wine.
Because what it did was to create a template
whereby lesser known or even unknown
(34:45):
wines of quality could be tasted blind
against benchmark and known wines of quality. And
if the judges were themselves of quality, the opinion of the
judges would be respected. Yes. And that
because it was held in Paris with nine judges, if it had been
held across a dining room in St. James's street with Michael
(35:07):
Broadbent and Harry War, it wouldn't have had the impact.
But it was an open Event and recorded in
Time magazine and then recorded in history. And
that template opened
it completely level the playing field.
So that's the most important legacy of the
(35:30):
Judgment Paris, in my view. Well, here's a. I'm glad you
brought up Harry Waugh. And this leads into two things I
wanted to talk to you about. But one of them is this is also from
my father's newsletter. And a couple months, about a year later, this is
Harry Waugh, and this is about Leslie Devante. My dad started two or three
chapters of Lesmie Devant. And I want to talk to you about this idea
(35:52):
maybe of a current version of things like the
Academy Divan, or particularly Les Amie Devant, because
I think that we need to continue to
educate the consumer on what a value of a good bottle of
wine is compared to the stuff they're being barraged with. In the meantime,
this article says Harry Waugh, noted British wine authority, was guest of
(36:14):
the regional director of Lesmie Devante, where we
pitted top Bordeaux in the five best Cabernet California
reds, the 73 Sterling, the 74 Stags Leit Merlot,
as did the Spring Mountain 73 and 72 Heights Cellars
Martha's Vineyard against seven French
wines, which include the 73 Lafitte, the 71 Mouton and the
(36:38):
73 Palmer. Like, wow, that's a pretty noble,
pretty noble lineup there. But I thought it was very interesting that about a year
later, Harry was in Los Angeles holding something
kind of similar to what I'm supposing that the judgment of
Paris probably triggered many, many of these sort of face
offs across the country and across the world.
(37:00):
But what's your thought of that? You started Academy
Devant for the education of what seems to be British and American
people that were living in Paris and this
in the 70s. During this period, my father was around selling
wine. The lesbian was very powerful. There's none left. I've
researched. I can't find any active chapters. Do you think it's time
(37:22):
for some kind of formal, I'm not gonna
say formal education, but just a social education of wine for people
to understand. I think
wine's all about communication, okay? It's all about
communicating what is behind the
wine. The story, the people, where the wines are growing and
(37:45):
so on and so forth. Without communication, without information,
a wine, it sort of can't really exist
because a wine can only exist to the
drinker once it's in his glass. Okay? But if there's
no information, if there's no story, if there's
no you don't go to a movie until you've read
(38:08):
the reviews and you know who the actors are, you know what the story is.
So you're all prepared for it. And
I think you're absolutely right. It's something like Les Ermes du Mains, which is such
a nice name. Friends of Wine. You
form a club and you have recommendations
every month. You have. The wine merchants will be dragging your
(38:31):
hand off to get on your list. And it could be. I think
it could be wonderful. And I think
the ranking.
I know Robert Parker is so the Wine Spectator, but
all these wine reviewers ranking. And James
(38:52):
suckling, who gives 100 points as though Easter bunnies.
I'll reserve judgment on that. Yeah, quite. It's got too
far. It's numbers. It's numbers and money.
Because the hundred point is very, very expensive. And that's not really what
wine's about. Wine is about stories and people and about
enjoying a glass of wine with friends. And wine
(39:15):
can be $10. I mean, I read in the
International New York Times Eric Asimov's
columns are very often reproduced. He
talks about under $20 wines, and he's just been talking
about Rieslings, which not many of them are under
$20. But I mean,
(39:37):
wine is about consumption and wine is about communication. You
cannot, in my view, have intelligent consumption
without communication. And so I think if you
were to think of relaunching Les Ami du Vi, a little chapter of that,
it would. It'll do very well. I'm very
interested in doing it maybe as a legacy to my dad, maybe as
(39:58):
wine world. You know, this is what's happening here, and maybe it's happening
in London, because for one, Covid has changed,
radically changed, I think, A, the consumption of wine, and
B, how we buy it. Because all of us in the
Internet world are experiencing a spike in sales, but it doesn't seem to be tapering
yet. And not only that, what people are buying from me are
(40:21):
totally different than what they were buying pre Covid. I'm selling all the brands.
Austin Hope, Camus, you know, Silver Oak. I can sell all those things now. I
couldn't sell them before, but the story behind what
I try to tell my clients, and the reason
I taste every Tuesday, I taste around 300 wines a month, is
to find these little gems, these under $20 wines that are
(40:44):
properly made, that carry a value, an ethereal
value past the price and some kind of alcohol in
the bottle. Right? It's the story, it's the conversation starter. What
are we going to talk About. And you brought up this thing about natural
wines. I mean, this is driving me crazy
because, you know, I got a
(41:06):
salesperson. It's natural. What do you mean by that? I mean, what is unnatural
about other wines that you're talking about? But
the biodynamic movement, I think, is very interesting. The organic
movement. Well, let me say it this way. I have so many
winemakers that come here and say, I don't understand the organic. We've been
organic by nature. I don't want my children crawling
(41:28):
around the vineyard picking up pesticides.
Sure. I think
it's very different between natural wines. Natural wines, what
happens in the cellar. Okay. Everything else,
biodynamic, organic, or whatever you want, sustainable
viticulture happens in the vineyard. And they're two incredible
(41:50):
different things. And so I've lived without natural wine all
my life, and I'm going to continue to survive without it. I'm
against natural wines in principle because they get away with murder
and as is Janice Robinson. So we, you know, we. I
agree, we kind of tend to ignore them. I want to know what's
unnatural. I mean, wasn't the addition of sulfites? It's natural.
(42:13):
The Bourdelais started that how many years ago? It's a natural thing. It's
natural chemicals. Now, I understand if you're going to put, you know, mega purple or
whatever they call that stuff in a wine to change the color. That's probably.
But I think the
original natural wines of the Georgian wines, which have always been
defined in Amphora, know, 2,000 years ago. And so those
(42:37):
really taste natural. But to use
natural wine just because it doesn't have any sulphur is.
Well, I mean, it annoys me. Yes, I agree. You
brought that up. The caucus wines I've had a lot lately.
Armenia, which I'm Armenian, they've doubled in wineage from
(42:57):
27 to 54 in the last few years.
Most of them will not grow the French varietals. They grow
indigenous varietals. Adeni and Sireni and
Volskahat and these things you can't pronounce. But
that trade has been around much longer than
the traditional trade. What do you think about the ability of.
(43:20):
I'm a huge fan. I was at a wine
competition in Romania in
Kloof, which is just
Transylvania, which last year, and the wines are
fascinating. Now, of course, they do have Aligate, they have Chardonnay,
they have French varietals, but that's not their strength.
(43:42):
They do very well with them because they have a European climate.
But their strength is of their original
grape varieties, which I can't name now. And
Italy by far has so
many hundred, thousands indigenous grape varieties.
And they're bringing them out of the woodwork to such an
(44:05):
extent, I think Italy as a European country, I always, if I'm asked
which is the most creative European country at
the moment, it's always Italy for me. I mean, France
is doing very well, but I mean, Italy is reinventing, is
reinventing the past. It's going back to the future.
There's a guy and I said about Armenia,
(44:28):
you talk about even
Bulgaria, for instance. I mean, I'd love, if I had my time
over again, I would spend more time traveling around
the backwoods of Europe rather than the New
World. Yes. Well, it is fascinating. And they're coming here. A gentleman was
(44:48):
here while in the conference room I'm sitting in last week from
Artsakh, and he is trying to create
a wine trail in Artsakh. Now, this is, you know, this is
eight hours from downtown Yetavan, Armenia. This is not the, you know,
but apparently he's got a spa type environment and he's creating
indigenous wines and they're very well made
(45:11):
once they get the technologies and the winemakers that know what they're doing.
I mean, I think everything. He's creating
a story from a place. And
there was a long interview about three months ago,
Fiona Tiemple of Le Pan, and
(45:31):
she's written a book which my Academy Divine library
published called Ten Great Wine Estates
of Europe. And this Frescobaldi and Torres and
Gaia and so on and so forth. And
Fiona said, when people,
(45:51):
when people come to Le Pain in the cellar,
they're embarrassed. They don't like the
put off by the whole technical aspect of it.
They're happiest in the vineyard when I can talk
them through the story. And that's it. That's.
That really. That really is. It's the story. And
(46:15):
wine without a story is.
Well, here's something I tell people, and I think my listeners are probably
tired of hearing it, but I can't emphasize it enough. If you
go to the Internet and you go to Groupon and you get 15 bottles of
wine for $45. Yeah. And I know these wines
and you take it home and you taste it, you go, well, this isn't that
(46:37):
good. That's not a story. That's not an experience that
does no value to anybody. The same with these off,
not off brands, but these. And I have no problem with bulk wine. I have
no problem with private labels. You can find some very good values there.
But I had a blogger in my office, very well known
blogger, and she was tasting with me on a Tuesday. And I said, while
(46:59):
we're waiting for the next vendor, let's open this bottle. That was sent to me
from a competitor, which is pretty bizarre. But we opened it up and it was
Beaujolais. It was French Beaujolais, it was real, but it
was really bad. 16 at the time. And she goes, this is
really bad. And I said, yeah, and they're selling it for like 20 bucks.
But the problem was when I rolled the label over, it was from
(47:21):
Saturday Night Live, the TV show. And I think to myself,
some consumer saw something somewhere. Oh, Saturday
Night Live. And I'm a fan, let me buy the bottle and I'll have my
friends come over and they open this stuff up and they cannot say this is
even palatable. It's just not good. And where's the story and the experience
in that? There was a story, but they. But it was a false story.
(47:45):
Yeah, I mean, I think
there's a lot of hype. I mean, wine is. Wine
is sold well. I
mean, a lot of wine is sold with no real reflection of
what it's made, where it's made and what it's made from. So it's sold as
a consumable product and
(48:12):
the consumer needs wine merchants or
needs advisors like you. Back to communication. When I
was asked years and years ago, all the time, how can
I buy, how can I be really confident buying wine? And I
said, find a wine merchant you can trust because you get a
relationship with a wine merchant or two or three, and they'll
(48:35):
begin to know your tastes. They're not going to let you down. They're not going
to sell you something which is going to rip you off. So
basically, it's a matter of trust and communication.
So I'm glad you said that because that's what it's about, right? I mean,
you have to have somebody that tries to understand your palate that
you experiment with that you come to their shop. So here's
(48:58):
this guy and they've written this algorithm so you can go to
some websites and you can say, oh, I drink black coffee, I salt my food,
I like raw mushrooms. And all of a sudden they've built this profile around
your palate. And I think this is a bunch of malarkey. And how could they
possibly understand your palate? Through some simple questions.
And I point to this example. The other day somebody came in with a very
(49:21):
interesting campagna red Very volcanic
soil. It was fascinating wine. And I thought to myself,
okay, how would this algorithm that's supposed to be teaching
somebody what their palate is even know about this wine? In other words,
where would they put this wine in the category that they would recommend it to
you? How does that work? You ever heard of these things, these algorithms?
(49:43):
No, no, no, no, no. I mean, I can,
I can. I mean, there used
to be a book written. You are what you eat. Well, of course, that's right.
If you keep on eating Big Macs, you're
going to end up dead because you'll die. But I
mean, it's. I don't,
(50:06):
I don't see how an algorithm, even with all
the artificial intelligence in the world, can tell
you what profile of wine you should drink.
Because drinking is a matter of choice.
You choose what books you're going to read, you choose what movies you're going to
see, you choose what you're
(50:28):
going to cook this evening, and you choose a
bottle of wine. And it's a matter of, it's a matter
of choice. What do you think of the
packaging of wine now? I did a, about 10 years ago, somebody
sent me and we'll wrap up with this. We're getting on an hour here. Somebody
sent me about a year ago a sample of some Merlot from
(50:50):
South Africa. It was in a 750ml plastic bottle.
I kept it for some reason and now it's, it's starting to look like
the food grade lining is separating. It's kind of
disgusting looking. But I did notice recently in a
local store that there was a liter bottle now of some plastic bottled
wines. And of course canned wines are out here. I did a big
(51:12):
tasting on 75 different canned wines.
I don't know, I have a mixed bag. I mean the one thing about the
plastic bottles is you can put 36 bottles in a case
had the same weight as 12 glass bottles. So from the restaurant trade on the
house pour, maybe this is a decent.
I have nothing against wine in cans. I think that is.
(51:37):
And we drink beer in cans, we drink orange juice, all that kind of stuff.
I think wine in cans, particularly
25cl cans or whatever they are, is very
good for the younger, younger drinker. And
it's to hand, you know, you have a can of wine in your fridge, you
pop the top. Okay, fine. I'm terribly
(51:59):
against wine in plastic bottles just because I think
good wine deserves more. Yes.
And glass. But now they're making paper
bottles. Yeah, Tetra Tech or they call it. Yeah, yeah, so
I'm quite a fan of the bag in box, which has a
sort of lining. But, I mean, I think the whiskey boys have
(52:22):
developed a paper bottle with a screw cap.
Yeah, they have that. Yeah.
I'll tell you the cans I tasted, and some of them came out on top.
I had appellated vintage Cabernet in a.
In a 187. I had Russian River Pinot
Noir in a. In a 250. Most
(52:46):
of it of the 75 I tasted was over sulfur. And just like,
oh, we're going to put it in a can, so don't worry about it. And
I was unfortunate, but there were a few seller stars that were.
They were trying to produce and put into the bottle. If they. And I actually
had vendors come in and I would pour it in a glass for them and
just say, hey, what's your opinion of this wine? And they're like, oh, it's pretty
(53:06):
good wine. I said, well, I just took it out of this can. So they
were a little bit shocked at that. But the plastic bottle, I think I agree.
What's interesting was the plastic bottle I have, which is a
750. It looks small compared to a regular 750 because the
glass is not so thick. So the bottles they're selling now are 1 liters
in plastic, and they look like a 750 on the
(53:28):
shelf. Until you grab it, you really can't tell. We drink water
out of plastic. We drink. That's true. That's the
only thing that I. I drink out of plastic. Yeah, that's true.
But actually, we don't. We don't drink water plastic
because we have very fresh water here. But
I'm against plastic and wine. Yeah, I agree with that. I think it's.
(53:52):
There's still a value to the romance of the wine.
I'm headed out of town this weekend. I'm taking a nice selection of wines. I
have friends that are learning to appreciate other things than Napa Valley Cabernet.
And I love sitting with them and popping the cork and pouring
the wines. There's something romance to that.
And I don't think Screwcap takes away the romance.
(54:15):
Yeah, I don't know. The Australians have been
on screw cap for 30 years.
New Zealand, you can't even find a cork. New Zealand. Exactly. And I
think you just have to understand that's part of
the package. I mean, I, you know, I can't
conceive of a bottle of
(54:38):
vintage Bordeaux or Burgundy or Charonneuve du Pape without a cork.
But I'm in favor of stove
enclosures. I'm very much in favor of vinolock. It's more expensive. But I'm
in favor of stove enclosures because they absolutely do what
they say. They preserve the. They preserve the fruit. And
after 10 or 15 years, there's no variation and so on and so forth.
(55:01):
True. But I mean, I think it's. You know,
it's sort of. Certain people will frown on
serving closures, and I think. I think they're wrong. Yeah.
I think I love them personally, because my job is a lot
easier tasting 375 wines in a day
because I don't have to uncork them all. But.
(55:23):
I mean, you have Hugh Johnson, whose memoir is called
A Life Uncorked. He could hardly have called it A Life Unscrewed. Yeah.
You happen to be a London dry gin person. Well,
I drank gin in my early 20s to such an extent
that. Yeah. But I did taste.
(55:46):
I went to a gin distillery up in Yorkshire
last year, last September. And it was fascinating.
I mean, the purity. And we tasted five or six gins
with different botanicals. Yes. And you've got to
serve it with a good tonic. Fever Tree is a good tonic.
Sweats is sweet. But I was totally
(56:08):
converted. I remembered. And I really only drink gin now. And
Negroni. One Negroni a year. Yes. I
remembered why I was such a fan of gin, tasting
that. That distilled gin, because it just tasted so good.
Well, during the. My father was born in Cairo, and during the English
rule, so to speak, he became a London dry gin guy and
(56:32):
turned me onto it. And I can't. He poo poos every time
I serve him something other than, like, Gordon's, because he loves the
juniper berry character. But I'm gonna. I'm gonna shock him. I'm gonna shock
you. I think this morning I just received a case of this.
And this is now Japanese gin.
Ah. And, you know, of course, they've done wonders with Scotch.
(56:55):
And the part that's a little distressing, it says
I can't even pronounce it. But then this is a batch distilled with the essentially
Japanese and traditional London dry style.
So I'm thinking, wow. And it is very dry and very
juniper berry driven. Yeah.
Yeah. Maybe I'll send you a bottle. I don't know if I can get there,
(57:16):
but 135 degrees. So I don't want to take much more of your time.
Mr. Spurrier, this has been a fascinating conversation. I know the listeners will love it.
Maybe do it again. I do need to get to York and visit my
nephew who's at soccer college and getting his degree in international
business. And when that happens, maybe we can meet and
have a Greek. Great. Well, I mean, if you come to London. Yeah,
(57:39):
that'll be. Well, York is. Well, I mean.
Yeah, we'll get there somehow. It is only a couple of hours
on the train. Yeah, it's perfect. And you're how
far from London? Oh, no, no, we're three hours in
London. You are? Okay, well, I'll make a trip. We're a long
way. It'll be worth it. Yeah. Such a pleasure having a conversation with
(58:02):
this evening for you, this morning for me. Well. And
do progress on the Amy Duva idea. I
think that's. I really needed your opinion because
I've asked a lot of people, but I trusted with you, in your experience with
Academy Divine, that I think the time is right. It's such a lovely name
(58:22):
and it says Les Ami du Man, the Friends of Wine. I mean, what else?
What more do you want? What else do you want? Salut, Mercia.
Thank you for listening to Wine Talks with Paul Callum Carey. And don't forget to
(58:44):
subscribe because there's more great interviews on their way. And of
course, all these podcasts are sponsored by the original Wine of the Month Club,
48 years in business. Don't forget to visit our website,
wineofthemonthclub.com Folks, have a great time
out there in the wine world. Cheers.
Now, from high atop his desk, get
ready to peel it all back and
get to the root of the subject, no pun
intended, with Paul K
On winetalks,
where he takes no prisoners and calls it
(00:26):
the way he sees it.
Hey, welcome. Welcome to Wine Talks with Paul Kay. We are
available on Google Play, Spotify, itunes, Apple Play, wherever you
guys hang out for your podcasting. And today we are just going
to continue with our Judgment of Paris series. And this is.
I'm honored, I'm privileged, I'm humbled to have with us
(00:50):
what would I say, the architect of what could have been or is
the greatest thing that ever happened to California wine or American wine for that matter.
But really, when you talk about modern times of wine
consumption, there are three things that have happened. Two of
them are dealt with consumption and the primary one, which is the
Judgment of Paris here in 1976, changed the world of wine.
(01:13):
And we have with us Mr. Stephen Spurrier, all the way from Dorset,
England. Welcome to the show. Thank you very
much, Paul. We have so much to talk about. I don't think we can
do it in the 45 minutes that we allocate for this. It doesn't matter. I
got all the time in the world. We're going to have some fun. I wanted
to start with this because we're going to get into the bowels of the Judgment
(01:34):
of Paris, and there's so much press and there's things to talk about. And I've
had George Tabor on the show. I've had Violet Grgich. Mr. Barrett's coming on,
Bowes coming on. You know, there's a lot of history. We'll talk about that soon.
But I want to talk about the first sentence of the book. The first
sentence of the book says, on an Autumn Day in 1970, two, Englishmen
were walking around Paris's posh Right bank near Rue
(01:55):
Royale. Why were two Englishmen walking
around the Right bank and rue Royale in 1970?
How did you get there? Well, I think
I got married. Well, let's start at the start. I joined the
London wine trade in 1964. I'd always
(02:16):
wanted to go into the wine trade. I'm a
younger son, and in
England, the elder brother inherits everything. Yeah. So
I know that, too. That stopped a bit now. So, I
mean, we were a privileged family, so there was money around.
And while I always envied my elder brother
(02:38):
his security, he always envied my independence. Yes.
After university and that. I joined the wine trade in
64 and got married in
early 68. And because of the money
and my love of France, which was already deep inside me,
I bought a property with a ruin on it in the
(03:02):
Department Duval down in the south of France.
And so my wife and I, the day of our marriage, the evening of
our marriage, we took our first class carriages,
the golden arrow at Victoria, to go to Paris and
to start our life in France. Just like that. Just like
that. Well, I mean I didn't
(03:25):
pass it on at the ceremony, but for the
first few years of our life, whenever I
gave an idea to my wife, she said, well, why not, let's do it. And
unfortunately, when I started the vineyard here about
10 years ago, she said, yeah, why not? As long as you pay for it.
Yeah. A vineyard in England no less. Right.
(03:48):
There I was in Provence. And we tried to rebuild the ruin.
We got ripped off. We were far too young, but we
had a good time in Provence. And it was, you know,
I was 26 and she was 21 and we
discovered, well, we had a good time
and. But then we knew after two years it wasn't going to
(04:11):
work. So we'd have to go through
a total emigration, I mean
non residents change of residence through the bank of England
because the taxes in England were so horrendous. And we
didn't leave to avoid taxes, but we went through
the system which permitted us to
(04:34):
sort of no longer be considered English
residents. And so Bella, my wife said,
okay, well it's not worked hard. Should we go back to London? Because we
kept our heist there. And I said no, I'm not going back to London
with my tail between my legs. Let's go to Paris and I'll go back
into the wine trade. So we moved to Paris and that was where
(04:56):
white two gentlemen were walking around the Rue Royale
in September 1970. And there was no wine
trade. There was no wine trade in the way that I knew it in London.
Of course there wasn't, there's no reason why there should have been. So there was
no possibility I could have gotten a job
as an Englishman speaking adequate but not very good
(05:18):
French on and so forth. And with my friend who was a lawyer
in the next door, next door block, we passed a wine shop,
little wine shop called the Carvel in Madeleine. And I
said to Christopher, I said, that's my dream, a little shop like
that. I know exactly what I could do with it and that's my
(05:39):
absolute dream. So he dragged me in and I
looked around and eventually the owner,
a sophisticated lady said may I sell you something?
And my Friend said, yes, my friend. My friend
would like to buy your shop. And she said,
actually, it's for sale. So we talked about
(06:02):
it and we discussed it
and the price was set. But then what's
interesting, and it's sort of almost been a pattern in my life,
she got second thoughts because her husband had been a
very good Calviste. He'd been a very good wine merchant, and he
got cancer and he died two years previously. And she was
(06:25):
just holding the fort. And she didn't see
how a young Englishman could honor
the reputation of her husband, of her late
husband. So I said, okay, Madam Future, here's the deal.
We're coming up to October 1st. I'll work for you for
free for six months. And if you think I can honor your
(06:47):
husband's memory, we'll do the deal. If not.
If not, not. So on April 1, which was still April
Fool's Day in Paris, they call it the Poisson. I was going to ask that
question, actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it only runs until midday.
April 1, 1971. She gave me the keys to the cash
(07:07):
desk and I took it over. Now, in those six months,
I'd learned much better French. I knew exactly what
I wanted to do with the shop. I was already. I got to know the
clientele. We were in what was called the Golden Triangle,
the Place La Madeleine, the Rue Royale, the Boulevard Malesherbes,
all that kind of stuff. And Paris was much more
(07:31):
international in those days than it is now. All the American banks were there,
all the American and English law firms were there, and they were all in
the eighth. And so I had this English clientele
basically at my feet. But
Madame Fougere had never, because she didn't speak English, had never
thought about them. So the day I took it over,
(07:55):
I placed an ad in the Herald Tribune which said,
your wine merchant speaks English. Ring Steven Spiderman.
What a benefit, right? And that's really how it began. And
so within, I mean, I did, I have to admit, I didn't know what I
was doing. And we
were bottling Vaude Neur at the time. And I got rid of all that
(08:17):
I didn't intend to sell Vaudinaire. And the
supplier of the inexpensive but inexpensive
va ordinaire said, monsieur Espilier, you're going to lose half your
clientele. I said, that's the half I want to lose. So
it was, I mean, I was young and,
(08:37):
you know, a bit of a dreamer. You said something, though, that what you've done,
I mean, I'm going back Just from when you moved to France.
And I'm from a family of immigrants. My father immigrated to America in
1949, my grandfather, my grandmother, et cetera.
You know, this is a risk. And if you read about Mike Girgich in the,
in the book, and he comes From Croatia with $32, did
(08:59):
you consider this a risk when you just picked up and left with your wife
and moved to the Provence? And then once you decided to do that, was it
even. No, no, we had, we had tremendous. I mean, we.
I had kept. Because I was moving to
an address with a house on it, even though it was a ruined
house. We kept our four
(09:21):
story house in Chelsea. Yeah. So.
And there was a bit of money on both sides
and we were young and
adventurous, but we were totally secure financially. There was
no risk.
There was no financial risk. It never occurred to us
(09:45):
because we didn't actually.
I'm certainly not going to say we had more money than we needed. It's not
that. But we didn't actually think of financial
stuff at that time. So you pick up, you move to Paris, you find
this unbelievable store. And I love the Van
Odonaire conversation because it says in the book, you're wheeling
(10:07):
barrels around. You know, in those days you could do that, right.
You could come in with your carafe or your bottles or your. Whatever they call
it and you can fill it up. And you could do that in America at
that time too. You can't do it now. But you had an idea
then that this store was going to be more classical, let's say
English merchant. And I'm interested to know why you think
(10:29):
in Paris at that time that there wasn't a wine trade of
to sort of. There wasn't a wine store in every corner, maybe like they would.
There was, there was, there
was a Nicolas store. Oh, yeah, he's a famous guy.
Yeah. But I mean, they were brilliant stores. They had wines going back to the
19th century. I mean, they were fantastic. Wow. But they
(10:51):
were, they. But then there were a lot of independent stores that were
known as Carviste. And then there were three or four real top wine
merchants. There was Jean Baptiste Bess, Jean Baptiste Chaudet,
both on the Left bank, and Lucien Le grand on the Right Bank. And
it was Le grand that I became particularly friendly and did
quite a lot of stuff with. But then Paris was. And then there were the
(11:14):
luxury stores like Fauchon and Ediyard. So Paris was
certainly not a backwater in terms of wine.
I would say that the consumers, the Parisians Themselves
were backwaters because they drank a lot of rubbish
and they were not terribly. They were more concerned
(11:34):
with the price of the bottle than what it tasted like. And I guess
that was what I was determined
to change. Every single wine I bought for the shop was
a wine where I knew the producer. I'd been to the estate,
and I drink it myself. So
(11:54):
that was. And I never sold wine. I just said, try this,
you'll like it. And it worked. That's interesting because
we're going to talk about this later, because once we get to the Judgment of
Paris story itself, but we're kind of confronted with that in
the industry right now. And I've said this many times on the show, but
people are bringing in €1 per liter wines in America, bottling
(12:17):
them under a bunch of labels, putting. Put him on Groupon for three or four
dollars. And it's kind of interesting that we're going
back. Seems like there's a part of
consumption that seems to be going backwards, and then
we're trying to get it to go forward. So we'll talk about that when I
get the judgment of Paris.
(12:37):
So we have this store and you've now are establishing this
American and English clientele. So, you know, I'm
a huge fan of Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable
Feast, you know, which sets in the twenties in Paris. It seems so
romantic. The movie A Midnight in Paris is kind
of focused on that. And you said that it was not as international.
(13:00):
It is more international then than it is today. That's. No, no, no. There
were more. Paris was still very, very French. I
see. Basically I had IBM. The whole
offices of IBM were in the street next door. Street to
me. But the
average Parisian did not speak English. So although all the
(13:22):
international companies were there,
it was. It was not an international
city like. Like London has become and like Paris is now.
And with the. With my Anglo Saxon clientele, I
certainly kept my French clientele. And the shop
(13:43):
was expanding. They used to drop by in the
evenings and taste a glass of wine or two. And
I used to talk them through it. And
one of them, they were in a law firm in the Place de
Madeleine. He said, you know, if you
could ever put this in a structured manner, we'd love to learn about wine,
(14:05):
because we don't know anything about wine. And the place next door,
which was a locksmith and I don't know what the hell you want a locksmith
in the middle of Paris for. But anyway, it was a locksmith
on two floors came up for sale And I made a bid
for it at the bankruptcy auction and I got it
and founded l' Academy du Vin. Now, what's interesting,
(14:29):
I wasn't going to call it l' Academy du Vin. I wanted to call it
Lambassade du Vin because I thought of myself as an ambassador
for wine and not an educator. But
Lambassade du Vin had been taken by someone else, and l' Academie
du Vin, being such a. I suppose a grand name, had
not. So hence l' Academie du Vin was formed, which
(14:51):
was the first privately owned wine school in France,
run by an American friend of mine called John Winroth and myself.
And basically, that is
the base, the kernel of the Judgment of Paris.
Had there been no Academy du Vin, the Judgment of Paris would not
have. Happened, which is fascinating because George says
(15:14):
that's how he learned about it. Yeah,
he was doing a wine course with us. But the thing is that. So
I opened in late 72,
early 73, in
October 72, an American lady who'd been working
on the Herald Tribune, who had become a
(15:38):
client of the shop came to see me and
she saw what was going on next door and she said, what's that? I said,
it's going to be a wine school. She said, well,
would you like anyone to help you with it? And I said, well, I think
that's a great idea because we could use the help. I'm running the
shop and. Sure. So Patricia Gallagher was American
(16:01):
and she. Her family had come over,
you know, in the late 1600s. She wasn't one of the
earliest, but they came over on the east coast where she
still. Her family still has roots and
she was very proud of being American and not in
a. In a show off sense, but she was proud of her roots. And
(16:23):
so every 4th of July, you know, from
73, 74, 75 onwards, she tried to find American wine in
Paris and couldn't because maybe Fauchon had Almaden or
something. But then what was most important, because
we had the wine school and we had a big tasting room and we
spoke English and we were bang in the middle of Paris.
(16:46):
California vintner's producers and the journalists
like Robert Finnegan and Alexis Bespalov
came to the shop, came to La Cabaret de Vine,
and the California producers brought their wine.
And I'd never tasted California wine before.
(17:07):
Patricia had not tasted California wine of that quality before.
And it was entirely due to Patricia that
the idea came
that we should hold a tasting of these wines to
simply draw attention to the quality coming out of
California. Totally
(17:30):
altruistic. And we'd given tastings, I mean, we'd given
tastings of Australian wine from the Australian
embassy, Spanish wine from the Spanish embassy. We were, you know,
basically the only game in town who ever thought
of non French wine. And but this was.
Patricia took this to another plane and she had vacation
(17:52):
in September. 75, she went to San Francisco.
Robert Finnegan marked her card a bit. She went to Marta Lena, she went
to Stag's Leap, she went all over the place. And she came back
saying, it's extraordinary, we must do this. And I said,
okay, Patricia, that's fine, we'll do it.
But you insist. We need a peg to hang it on.
(18:16):
And because this is going to be a bigger
thing and it's a risk, it's
not just a one off tasting. We're trying to achieve something here. We're not just
showing a range of wines from Spain. And so we need
a raison d' etre. And she said, I've got the perfect
raison d' etre. 76 is the bicentennial of the
(18:39):
War of Independence. Wow, I've never heard
that connection. And I said, well, you know, we Brits don't really celebrate
having lost the colony, but I'll go along with that.
And so that was Patricia's idea. And so once we got the peg
and it was totally altruistic, we then began to invite
the tasters. We got over
(19:02):
to Valerie and you've got all the tastes, all their names in George's book. And
we were very well known. We were. Well, we were well known, we were highly
respected, we were very much liked. We never put our hand out
for any sponsorship or any freebies. And so
the tasters, all of whom we knew, well,
we knew most of them. We. I didn't know
(19:25):
Raymond Oliver, the chef at the Grand Ver four. I
didn't know Pierre Brejoux from the Institut des Applasses controller.
But you know, it was an invitation from Academy Dauphin to taste
California wine. So they all ticked the box and said yes. So May
24th rolled along. I went to
California with my wife over Easter, which was in
(19:48):
April, to make a final selection. And we had six
Chardonnays and six Cabernet based wines.
And thanks to Joanne Dupuis, who is
bringing a group of 22 people, a wine and tennis
group, she hand carried the wines because I wouldn't have been able to get
24 bottles through the French customs
(20:11):
on my own. So Joanne really kind of
facilitated the tasting in that sense. And
I gave a tasting for her group, which included Andre
Cheliceff and Louis Martini and really all the great and the good,
but the senior members of the California wine
establishment at La Canada du Vin.
(20:33):
But a week or so
before the tasting, it occurred to me that with the
exception of Aubrey de Vilain, who was married to a girl from
San Francisco, Pamela, nobody
to my knowledge would have ever tasted California wine before.
And I was worried that. Why would they? Yeah,
(20:57):
well, I think Christoph Vaniquet, who was the youngest chef sommelier in
Paris at the Tour d' Argent, he almost certainly would have
done, but I. But basically the
other tasters, many of whom were of, you know,
a certain age, and I was afraid
that however much they appreciated the quality,
(21:19):
they would kind of damn the wines with
faint praise like, oh, c' est pas mal.
And it would go off like a damp squid.
And I couldn't risk that. And I
proposed to Patricia that I put the four best
white Burgundy's and the four best red Bordeaux from my shop
(21:43):
into the tasting and make it a blind tasting. And she said,
you can't do that because they're not coming to a blind tasting, they're
not coming to a competition. They're coming to taste California
wines. I said, well, I'm going to do it anyway.
And so what? The wines are in George's book. Bata
Marache, Pune Marache. There was no.
(22:06):
They were really chosen. And also the vintages match too. They were
chosen just so the California wines,
if they slipped through in maybe a third or a
fifth, they would at least have got recognition vis a vis
the benchmarks of France. And we
chose them in a random order. I just put the names of
(22:31):
the wines on a bit of paper, screwed up the bit of paper.
Somebody took the piece of paper out of the hat. So the order of service
is random. The wines were served one by one,
which would not happen today. They would be left on the table. So you go
backwards and forwards. And when the tasters turned up,
I said, you have been invited just to taste California
(22:53):
wines. And I thought it would be interesting to make it a blind
tasting with the benchmark
wines from Burgundy and from Bordeaux.
And do you agree? And they said, yes. Yeah.
Pourquoi pas? Yeah. And so why
would they not? And sort of the rest is. The rest is history.
(23:15):
But it was a series of. The
idea was Patricia's, the whole package was
Patricia's. But I just
didn't want to take the risk of it going off as a damp squib.
And so, you know, we made it a
blind tasting. With the results, which, I mean, no one was
(23:36):
more surprised than me, but you'll see from George's
book, Chateau Martinez, six tasters put that top
and three tasters put it second. My bet was Charlotte. The three
tasters put shallow in second. But I thought Charlene was going to, was going to
come. Yeah, richer usually. Yeah, yeah. So. And then
of course the results of the whites were
(23:59):
divulged while all the whites were being cleared away. And that
created a little consternation, of course.
No, not so bad. Not shock horror. But I think
certain tasters, nameless, were
determined that it wouldn't happen again. And if
you look at the rankings out of 20 in the
(24:22):
reds, certain wines get two and four out of 20.
Well, you don't give that kind of mark.
So I think the tasters who gave those marks
recognized them as California, quite correct,
complete to slam them. And so it's always been in the back of
my mind that stag's leap from four year
(24:44):
old vines, 100% cabernet sauvignon
with Andrzej Tszedichev as a wine advisor
was so elegant and
un burley, so elegant that a
lot of the tasters thought it was French. And I think
(25:07):
they gave it a good look. It came top. I've run the
numbers backwards and forwards everywhere you want. Stagsley
still comes top. And
I think it, it was the only of one of
the California wines which had, which
could have possibly been mistaken for French. So that's just.
(25:29):
But doesn't that even, doesn't even buck the idea in
modern winemaking that you can't make a decent wine from that first
vintage of the first four or five, you know, harvests of grapes.
I think that's rubbish and apparently. Well, no,
no, I mean, I think that's rubbish because I mean, the vines are there
(25:50):
to produce grapes and that's what they want to do. And you
can produce grapes and make wine in the Trois
and feuille in a third leaf. So
this is a 73 and Warren had planted
in 1970. So actually they were in the
1771 70, so they were in their fourth leaf. So this was
(26:13):
basically their second vintage. But I don't think Warren had.
Anyway, if he'd made a 72, I didn't know about it.
My bet for the reds was Ridge and ridge, eventually
in 2006, ended up wiping the floor with everything. But
it was an absolute fair
(26:33):
blind tasting, as George recorded. And all
the tasters, without exception, when they got
back to where they lived in Bordeaux Or Burgundy or wherever,
got a really hard time of having betrayed France.
And not a single one of them mentioned that to me until
the 30th anniversary in 2006.
(26:58):
And those of them who were still alive said, you
know, Stephen, we can tell you now, but we really suffered.
Wow. I can imagine. There wasn't supposed to happen.
Pierre Brejou, who was the
director of the Institut des Appellacieux Controlles, was
asked to resign. And Pierre Tarry
(27:21):
of Charda Giscol, who was the mayor of Margaux, suggested he
resign as may. All this kind of stuff
they never told me because they knew that
the tasting had been held in honest
circumstances. Well, tell me about the. I want to read you something in a second,
but tell me then, because this is. I've read this many times about.
(27:44):
I think the wine trade in Bordeaux in the 70s was suffering a
little bit of a dip. There was some. I know that
Bordeaux was classically English trade.
Basically you would bottle in England or you would, you know, they had control of
the negociant status. Was that a
real thing at the time? By
(28:05):
76 they were fine. They were fine, okay. But the big scandal was
the Cruz scandal was 73. 72, 73, the
seven days war or whatever, the. Well, Melvin, our friend
Melvin, he lost everything in 72,
73. So they had recovered. The
72 vintage was terrible. The 73 vintage wasn't too bad.
(28:27):
Bordeaux had recovered by 76. It wasn't
economically very secure, but they weren't suffering as they had been
three or four years previously. But they didn't need the
competition. They did not need to be told that
Catholic from Napa Valley had beaten them.
That's not going to help. Let me. I want to read you something from my
(28:49):
dad. This is my father's newsletter. August 76. He
says he actually. He reprints the column from the
Time magazine, June 7, Time magazine. But then he writes, we received the
official results from Mr. Spurrier's Lacademie Devant
25 Rue Royale Paris and reproduce them here for
you. The 20 point system was used and the results are shown as total
(29:11):
points. The tastings were held blind. And then he
lists the winners and goes on. This is a remarkable accomplishment for Jim Barrett
of Chateau Montelena and for Warren Woodiarski of Stag Sleep. Jim is a local
palace for these resident and a practicing attorney of Torrance,
spends his weekends at the winery. Warren has been a friend of the palace radies,
wines and spirits as Jim has and gives us a visit whenever he's in town
(29:33):
now. I learned. I mean, I knew Mr. Barrett was a local person. I used
to surf with the youngest son, Kevin, and the
older brother Beau, now is the owner and winemaker. But
I didn't know Warren Winiarski slept in my brother's room when
he came into town. And that just befuddled me. But then, and
I'm just taking you back just for a second, chapter 16 of the
(29:56):
book. I want you to just reflect on this. Chapter 16 of the book
starts with. In the summer of 1975, Patricia Gallagher was
making plans to visit her sister and Palace Verdes Estates, the
wealthy coastal communities such as south of Los Angeles,
goes on to talk about your relationship with her. So I told this,
my father, he's 92 now, and this is about, I don't know, a few weeks
(30:19):
ago, I told him I visit him, he's in San Diego. I said, dad,
this is what it says in the book. He says, oh, yeah, she came into
the store. I go, what do you mean? He says, well, she came in,
introduced herself and said what she was doing. Not just
not about the Judgment of Paris in the sense of a contest, that she was
looking for some California wines. And it kind of jives
(30:40):
because back then in la, there were only really five
stores that had any premium wine selections. My father's, Duke of
Bourbon, Wally's and a couple others. And it just turns
out that Patricia Gallagher's sister lives in Palos Verres Estates. So
I find this connection kind of intriguing for me and.
And I wanted to tell the story that, you know,
(31:03):
I want to continue the story of the Judgment of Paris for younger
wine drinkers to understand, you know, how all this came about. George says to
me in his interview, well, I think California wines would
have eventually made their way into the world scene. Five or ten years later,
I'm like, yeah, but we wouldn't be having this conversation
because it was an event. It was a turning event. And it.
(31:26):
The migration, a slow migration of California wines into the world of wine would have
been uninteresting. But this event made it interesting.
I mean, I think it was. Well, Warren Winiarski said
the telephone rang off the hook. He couldn't sell his wine on the East
Coast. That's right. So the
telephone rang off the hook. And it was an event which people discussed. It got
(31:49):
so much press. And it was an event which
I redid it 10 years later in New York with
Sassy Sheen and Bartholomew Broadbent and a real top
class panel. And that confirmed the quality
of California reds. Because the Bordelayer said, you tasted
(32:09):
our wines far too young. Well, that was proved.
That wasn't proved. And the California wines had a
stronger showing in 86. Yes. 30 years later,
20 years, an even. Stronger showing in
2006. But
it was quite plainly a controversial event.
(32:31):
And when you have a controversial event, people discuss it.
And I think that is what gave the impetus
to California wine. Gave the impetus because
it kept on being discussed. You know what's fascinating
to me, too, particularly with today's modern techniques,
and you've got these electronic sorting tables, and they can throw the lizards off
(32:54):
of the stems as they come through the sorting table, these crazy technology.
But you have these phenomenal wines that were made in just
what I would call classical winemaking techniques. You had a
refractometer, maybe, and hydrometer, but
you weren't doing all these analysis. It was about phenolic ripeness and all
(33:14):
these things. And here are these gorgeous wines. In fact,
Peter Mondavi was saying it, that the Krug, I don't know,
49 or 52 or something, you know, was scored very
highly recently. How do you. The.
Andrei Cheliceff's Pinot Noirs that he made
in the mid-40s at Berlioz,
(33:38):
some of the greatest wines I've ever had. Wow. They are, I mean,
just unbelievable.
And that was a tasting that I did with a whole bunch of people in
1979. But, I mean, they were made as
natural products without all this hoo ha.
(33:59):
Now, about natural wines, yes, they were made in a natural manner.
And as Hubert de Vilain, who is asked so often
how he manages to make such wonderful wines,
he just says, we pick the grapes when they're ripe and do nothing.
Which seems like the right way to do it now, isn't it? Yeah, it seems
like the right way to do it. But I think I'd like to bring up
(34:22):
a point which to me is absolutely
key, is that whatever the
judgment of Paris did for California, and we all know what it did,
it did more for the international world of wine.
Because what it did was to create a template
whereby lesser known or even unknown
(34:45):
wines of quality could be tasted blind
against benchmark and known wines of quality. And
if the judges were themselves of quality, the opinion of the
judges would be respected. Yes. And that
because it was held in Paris with nine judges, if it had been
held across a dining room in St. James's street with Michael
(35:07):
Broadbent and Harry War, it wouldn't have had the impact.
But it was an open Event and recorded in
Time magazine and then recorded in history. And
that template opened
it completely level the playing field.
So that's the most important legacy of the
(35:30):
Judgment Paris, in my view. Well, here's a. I'm glad you
brought up Harry Waugh. And this leads into two things I
wanted to talk to you about. But one of them is this is also from
my father's newsletter. And a couple months, about a year later, this is
Harry Waugh, and this is about Leslie Devante. My dad started two or three
chapters of Lesmie Devant. And I want to talk to you about this idea
(35:52):
maybe of a current version of things like the
Academy Divan, or particularly Les Amie Devant, because
I think that we need to continue to
educate the consumer on what a value of a good bottle of
wine is compared to the stuff they're being barraged with. In the meantime,
this article says Harry Waugh, noted British wine authority, was guest of
(36:14):
the regional director of Lesmie Devante, where we
pitted top Bordeaux in the five best Cabernet California
reds, the 73 Sterling, the 74 Stags Leit Merlot,
as did the Spring Mountain 73 and 72 Heights Cellars
Martha's Vineyard against seven French
wines, which include the 73 Lafitte, the 71 Mouton and the
(36:38):
73 Palmer. Like, wow, that's a pretty noble,
pretty noble lineup there. But I thought it was very interesting that about a year
later, Harry was in Los Angeles holding something
kind of similar to what I'm supposing that the judgment of
Paris probably triggered many, many of these sort of face
offs across the country and across the world.
(37:00):
But what's your thought of that? You started Academy
Devant for the education of what seems to be British and American
people that were living in Paris and this
in the 70s. During this period, my father was around selling
wine. The lesbian was very powerful. There's none left. I've
researched. I can't find any active chapters. Do you think it's time
(37:22):
for some kind of formal, I'm not gonna
say formal education, but just a social education of wine for people
to understand. I think
wine's all about communication, okay? It's all about
communicating what is behind the
wine. The story, the people, where the wines are growing and
(37:45):
so on and so forth. Without communication, without information,
a wine, it sort of can't really exist
because a wine can only exist to the
drinker once it's in his glass. Okay? But if there's
no information, if there's no story, if there's
no you don't go to a movie until you've read
(38:08):
the reviews and you know who the actors are, you know what the story is.
So you're all prepared for it. And
I think you're absolutely right. It's something like Les Ermes du Mains, which is such
a nice name. Friends of Wine. You
form a club and you have recommendations
every month. You have. The wine merchants will be dragging your
(38:31):
hand off to get on your list. And it could be. I think
it could be wonderful. And I think
the ranking.
I know Robert Parker is so the Wine Spectator, but
all these wine reviewers ranking. And James
(38:52):
suckling, who gives 100 points as though Easter bunnies.
I'll reserve judgment on that. Yeah, quite. It's got too
far. It's numbers. It's numbers and money.
Because the hundred point is very, very expensive. And that's not really what
wine's about. Wine is about stories and people and about
enjoying a glass of wine with friends. And wine
(39:15):
can be $10. I mean, I read in the
International New York Times Eric Asimov's
columns are very often reproduced. He
talks about under $20 wines, and he's just been talking
about Rieslings, which not many of them are under
$20. But I mean,
(39:37):
wine is about consumption and wine is about communication. You
cannot, in my view, have intelligent consumption
without communication. And so I think if you
were to think of relaunching Les Ami du Vi, a little chapter of that,
it would. It'll do very well. I'm very
interested in doing it maybe as a legacy to my dad, maybe as
(39:58):
wine world. You know, this is what's happening here, and maybe it's happening
in London, because for one, Covid has changed,
radically changed, I think, A, the consumption of wine, and
B, how we buy it. Because all of us in the
Internet world are experiencing a spike in sales, but it doesn't seem to be tapering
yet. And not only that, what people are buying from me are
(40:21):
totally different than what they were buying pre Covid. I'm selling all the brands.
Austin Hope, Camus, you know, Silver Oak. I can sell all those things now. I
couldn't sell them before, but the story behind what
I try to tell my clients, and the reason
I taste every Tuesday, I taste around 300 wines a month, is
to find these little gems, these under $20 wines that are
(40:44):
properly made, that carry a value, an ethereal
value past the price and some kind of alcohol in
the bottle. Right? It's the story, it's the conversation starter. What
are we going to talk About. And you brought up this thing about natural
wines. I mean, this is driving me crazy
because, you know, I got a
(41:06):
salesperson. It's natural. What do you mean by that? I mean, what is unnatural
about other wines that you're talking about? But
the biodynamic movement, I think, is very interesting. The organic
movement. Well, let me say it this way. I have so many
winemakers that come here and say, I don't understand the organic. We've been
organic by nature. I don't want my children crawling
(41:28):
around the vineyard picking up pesticides.
Sure. I think
it's very different between natural wines. Natural wines, what
happens in the cellar. Okay. Everything else,
biodynamic, organic, or whatever you want, sustainable
viticulture happens in the vineyard. And they're two incredible
(41:50):
different things. And so I've lived without natural wine all
my life, and I'm going to continue to survive without it. I'm
against natural wines in principle because they get away with murder
and as is Janice Robinson. So we, you know, we. I
agree, we kind of tend to ignore them. I want to know what's
unnatural. I mean, wasn't the addition of sulfites? It's natural.
(42:13):
The Bourdelais started that how many years ago? It's a natural thing. It's
natural chemicals. Now, I understand if you're going to put, you know, mega purple or
whatever they call that stuff in a wine to change the color. That's probably.
But I think the
original natural wines of the Georgian wines, which have always been
defined in Amphora, know, 2,000 years ago. And so those
(42:37):
really taste natural. But to use
natural wine just because it doesn't have any sulphur is.
Well, I mean, it annoys me. Yes, I agree. You
brought that up. The caucus wines I've had a lot lately.
Armenia, which I'm Armenian, they've doubled in wineage from
(42:57):
27 to 54 in the last few years.
Most of them will not grow the French varietals. They grow
indigenous varietals. Adeni and Sireni and
Volskahat and these things you can't pronounce. But
that trade has been around much longer than
the traditional trade. What do you think about the ability of.
(43:20):
I'm a huge fan. I was at a wine
competition in Romania in
Kloof, which is just
Transylvania, which last year, and the wines are
fascinating. Now, of course, they do have Aligate, they have Chardonnay,
they have French varietals, but that's not their strength.
(43:42):
They do very well with them because they have a European climate.
But their strength is of their original
grape varieties, which I can't name now. And
Italy by far has so
many hundred, thousands indigenous grape varieties.
And they're bringing them out of the woodwork to such an
(44:05):
extent, I think Italy as a European country, I always, if I'm asked
which is the most creative European country at
the moment, it's always Italy for me. I mean, France
is doing very well, but I mean, Italy is reinventing, is
reinventing the past. It's going back to the future.
There's a guy and I said about Armenia,
(44:28):
you talk about even
Bulgaria, for instance. I mean, I'd love, if I had my time
over again, I would spend more time traveling around
the backwoods of Europe rather than the New
World. Yes. Well, it is fascinating. And they're coming here. A gentleman was
(44:48):
here while in the conference room I'm sitting in last week from
Artsakh, and he is trying to create
a wine trail in Artsakh. Now, this is, you know, this is
eight hours from downtown Yetavan, Armenia. This is not the, you know,
but apparently he's got a spa type environment and he's creating
indigenous wines and they're very well made
(45:11):
once they get the technologies and the winemakers that know what they're doing.
I mean, I think everything. He's creating
a story from a place. And
there was a long interview about three months ago,
Fiona Tiemple of Le Pan, and
(45:31):
she's written a book which my Academy Divine library
published called Ten Great Wine Estates
of Europe. And this Frescobaldi and Torres and
Gaia and so on and so forth. And
Fiona said, when people,
(45:51):
when people come to Le Pain in the cellar,
they're embarrassed. They don't like the
put off by the whole technical aspect of it.
They're happiest in the vineyard when I can talk
them through the story. And that's it. That's.
That really. That really is. It's the story. And
(46:15):
wine without a story is.
Well, here's something I tell people, and I think my listeners are probably
tired of hearing it, but I can't emphasize it enough. If you
go to the Internet and you go to Groupon and you get 15 bottles of
wine for $45. Yeah. And I know these wines
and you take it home and you taste it, you go, well, this isn't that
(46:37):
good. That's not a story. That's not an experience that
does no value to anybody. The same with these off,
not off brands, but these. And I have no problem with bulk wine. I have
no problem with private labels. You can find some very good values there.
But I had a blogger in my office, very well known
blogger, and she was tasting with me on a Tuesday. And I said, while
(46:59):
we're waiting for the next vendor, let's open this bottle. That was sent to me
from a competitor, which is pretty bizarre. But we opened it up and it was
Beaujolais. It was French Beaujolais, it was real, but it
was really bad. 16 at the time. And she goes, this is
really bad. And I said, yeah, and they're selling it for like 20 bucks.
But the problem was when I rolled the label over, it was from
(47:21):
Saturday Night Live, the TV show. And I think to myself,
some consumer saw something somewhere. Oh, Saturday
Night Live. And I'm a fan, let me buy the bottle and I'll have my
friends come over and they open this stuff up and they cannot say this is
even palatable. It's just not good. And where's the story and the experience
in that? There was a story, but they. But it was a false story.
(47:45):
Yeah, I mean, I think
there's a lot of hype. I mean, wine is. Wine
is sold well. I
mean, a lot of wine is sold with no real reflection of
what it's made, where it's made and what it's made from. So it's sold as
a consumable product and
(48:12):
the consumer needs wine merchants or
needs advisors like you. Back to communication. When I
was asked years and years ago, all the time, how can
I buy, how can I be really confident buying wine? And I
said, find a wine merchant you can trust because you get a
relationship with a wine merchant or two or three, and they'll
(48:35):
begin to know your tastes. They're not going to let you down. They're not going
to sell you something which is going to rip you off. So
basically, it's a matter of trust and communication.
So I'm glad you said that because that's what it's about, right? I mean,
you have to have somebody that tries to understand your palate that
you experiment with that you come to their shop. So here's
(48:58):
this guy and they've written this algorithm so you can go to
some websites and you can say, oh, I drink black coffee, I salt my food,
I like raw mushrooms. And all of a sudden they've built this profile around
your palate. And I think this is a bunch of malarkey. And how could they
possibly understand your palate? Through some simple questions.
And I point to this example. The other day somebody came in with a very
(49:21):
interesting campagna red Very volcanic
soil. It was fascinating wine. And I thought to myself,
okay, how would this algorithm that's supposed to be teaching
somebody what their palate is even know about this wine? In other words,
where would they put this wine in the category that they would recommend it to
you? How does that work? You ever heard of these things, these algorithms?
(49:43):
No, no, no, no, no. I mean, I can,
I can. I mean, there used
to be a book written. You are what you eat. Well, of course, that's right.
If you keep on eating Big Macs, you're
going to end up dead because you'll die. But I
mean, it's. I don't,
(50:06):
I don't see how an algorithm, even with all
the artificial intelligence in the world, can tell
you what profile of wine you should drink.
Because drinking is a matter of choice.
You choose what books you're going to read, you choose what movies you're going to
see, you choose what you're
(50:28):
going to cook this evening, and you choose a
bottle of wine. And it's a matter of, it's a matter
of choice. What do you think of the
packaging of wine now? I did a, about 10 years ago, somebody
sent me and we'll wrap up with this. We're getting on an hour here. Somebody
sent me about a year ago a sample of some Merlot from
(50:50):
South Africa. It was in a 750ml plastic bottle.
I kept it for some reason and now it's, it's starting to look like
the food grade lining is separating. It's kind of
disgusting looking. But I did notice recently in a
local store that there was a liter bottle now of some plastic bottled
wines. And of course canned wines are out here. I did a big
(51:12):
tasting on 75 different canned wines.
I don't know, I have a mixed bag. I mean the one thing about the
plastic bottles is you can put 36 bottles in a case
had the same weight as 12 glass bottles. So from the restaurant trade on the
house pour, maybe this is a decent.
I have nothing against wine in cans. I think that is.
(51:37):
And we drink beer in cans, we drink orange juice, all that kind of stuff.
I think wine in cans, particularly
25cl cans or whatever they are, is very
good for the younger, younger drinker. And
it's to hand, you know, you have a can of wine in your fridge, you
pop the top. Okay, fine. I'm terribly
(51:59):
against wine in plastic bottles just because I think
good wine deserves more. Yes.
And glass. But now they're making paper
bottles. Yeah, Tetra Tech or they call it. Yeah, yeah, so
I'm quite a fan of the bag in box, which has a
sort of lining. But, I mean, I think the whiskey boys have
(52:22):
developed a paper bottle with a screw cap.
Yeah, they have that. Yeah.
I'll tell you the cans I tasted, and some of them came out on top.
I had appellated vintage Cabernet in a.
In a 187. I had Russian River Pinot
Noir in a. In a 250. Most
(52:46):
of it of the 75 I tasted was over sulfur. And just like,
oh, we're going to put it in a can, so don't worry about it. And
I was unfortunate, but there were a few seller stars that were.
They were trying to produce and put into the bottle. If they. And I actually
had vendors come in and I would pour it in a glass for them and
just say, hey, what's your opinion of this wine? And they're like, oh, it's pretty
(53:06):
good wine. I said, well, I just took it out of this can. So they
were a little bit shocked at that. But the plastic bottle, I think I agree.
What's interesting was the plastic bottle I have, which is a
750. It looks small compared to a regular 750 because the
glass is not so thick. So the bottles they're selling now are 1 liters
in plastic, and they look like a 750 on the
(53:28):
shelf. Until you grab it, you really can't tell. We drink water
out of plastic. We drink. That's true. That's the
only thing that I. I drink out of plastic. Yeah, that's true.
But actually, we don't. We don't drink water plastic
because we have very fresh water here. But
I'm against plastic and wine. Yeah, I agree with that. I think it's.
(53:52):
There's still a value to the romance of the wine.
I'm headed out of town this weekend. I'm taking a nice selection of wines. I
have friends that are learning to appreciate other things than Napa Valley Cabernet.
And I love sitting with them and popping the cork and pouring
the wines. There's something romance to that.
And I don't think Screwcap takes away the romance.
(54:15):
Yeah, I don't know. The Australians have been
on screw cap for 30 years.
New Zealand, you can't even find a cork. New Zealand. Exactly. And I
think you just have to understand that's part of
the package. I mean, I, you know, I can't
conceive of a bottle of
(54:38):
vintage Bordeaux or Burgundy or Charonneuve du Pape without a cork.
But I'm in favor of stove
enclosures. I'm very much in favor of vinolock. It's more expensive. But I'm
in favor of stove enclosures because they absolutely do what
they say. They preserve the. They preserve the fruit. And
after 10 or 15 years, there's no variation and so on and so forth.
(55:01):
True. But I mean, I think it's. You know,
it's sort of. Certain people will frown on
serving closures, and I think. I think they're wrong. Yeah.
I think I love them personally, because my job is a lot
easier tasting 375 wines in a day
because I don't have to uncork them all. But.
(55:23):
I mean, you have Hugh Johnson, whose memoir is called
A Life Uncorked. He could hardly have called it A Life Unscrewed. Yeah.
You happen to be a London dry gin person. Well,
I drank gin in my early 20s to such an extent
that. Yeah. But I did taste.
(55:46):
I went to a gin distillery up in Yorkshire
last year, last September. And it was fascinating.
I mean, the purity. And we tasted five or six gins
with different botanicals. Yes. And you've got to
serve it with a good tonic. Fever Tree is a good tonic.
Sweats is sweet. But I was totally
(56:08):
converted. I remembered. And I really only drink gin now. And
Negroni. One Negroni a year. Yes. I
remembered why I was such a fan of gin, tasting
that. That distilled gin, because it just tasted so good.
Well, during the. My father was born in Cairo, and during the English
rule, so to speak, he became a London dry gin guy and
(56:32):
turned me onto it. And I can't. He poo poos every time
I serve him something other than, like, Gordon's, because he loves the
juniper berry character. But I'm gonna. I'm gonna shock him. I'm gonna shock
you. I think this morning I just received a case of this.
And this is now Japanese gin.
Ah. And, you know, of course, they've done wonders with Scotch.
(56:55):
And the part that's a little distressing, it says
I can't even pronounce it. But then this is a batch distilled with the essentially
Japanese and traditional London dry style.
So I'm thinking, wow. And it is very dry and very
juniper berry driven. Yeah.
Yeah. Maybe I'll send you a bottle. I don't know if I can get there,
(57:16):
but 135 degrees. So I don't want to take much more of your time.
Mr. Spurrier, this has been a fascinating conversation. I know the listeners will love it.
Maybe do it again. I do need to get to York and visit my
nephew who's at soccer college and getting his degree in international
business. And when that happens, maybe we can meet and
have a Greek. Great. Well, I mean, if you come to London. Yeah,
(57:39):
that'll be. Well, York is. Well, I mean.
Yeah, we'll get there somehow. It is only a couple of hours
on the train. Yeah, it's perfect. And you're how
far from London? Oh, no, no, we're three hours in
London. You are? Okay, well, I'll make a trip. We're a long
way. It'll be worth it. Yeah. Such a pleasure having a conversation with
(58:02):
this evening for you, this morning for me. Well. And
do progress on the Amy Duva idea. I
think that's. I really needed your opinion because
I've asked a lot of people, but I trusted with you, in your experience with
Academy Divine, that I think the time is right. It's such a lovely name
(58:22):
and it says Les Ami du Man, the Friends of Wine. I mean, what else?
What more do you want? What else do you want? Salut, Mercia.
Thank you for listening to Wine Talks with Paul Callum Carey. And don't forget to
(58:44):
subscribe because there's more great interviews on their way. And of
course, all these podcasts are sponsored by the original Wine of the Month Club,
48 years in business. Don't forget to visit our website,
wineofthemonthclub.com Folks, have a great time
out there in the wine world. Cheers.
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