Steven Spurrier - a class act

The wine world lost one of its greats five years ago this month.

It’s coming up to five years since the death of one of the giants of the wine world Steven Spurrier. He’s one of the very few people who managed to put the subject on the front pages of the world’s newspapers when he organised the so-called Judgement of Paris competition on 24th May 1976. There is going to be a lot of publicity around the 50th anniversary.

This was a blind tasting judged by the great and good of the French wine world pitting the might of Bordeaux and Burgundy, against California, a place whose wines most Europeans had never even tasted. Surely France could not lose. But thrillingly, deliciously it did, with Californian wines coming top in both the white and red categories. It inspired a book and a (pretty dreadful) film Bottle Shock starring Alan Rickman chewing the scenery as Spurrier. In fact, the media, particularly over here and in the US, has never lost interest. Perhaps because who doesn’t like to see both wine snobs and the French taken down a peg or two?

Spurrier outside his wine shop in Paris

More significantly, it marked the arrival of American and later Australian, Chilean and other New World wines. Fittingly, I first met Spurrier at a round table tasting for an upmarket Chilean wine. These tastings could be nerve-wracking affairs for new writers. They still fill me with anxiety to be honest. I never know what to say as the big beasts of the wine world opine. Sometimes, the cellar rooms where such tastings are often held seem much too small for all those jostling egos.

I was sat next to Spurrier and much to my surprise, he asked me my opinion on the wines, something I don’t think any other writer had done up to that point. He then engaged with what I said, and said something like, ‘yes, I think you’ve got it there’. Or words to that effect. It’s quite hard to express how startling this experience was to someone outside the wine world. It’s like Martin Scorsese asking your opinion on film making.

He was the same with everyone, unfailingly charming and always with something interesting to say about the wine in question. When he spoke it wasn’t an excuse to show off his knowledge or tasting prowess. He didn’t need to. He seemed to be at every tasting in London, always in an immaculate suit looking like it had been tailored in 1984. Perhaps because of his affluent background, he inherited £250,000 (something like £5 million in today’s money) in his ‘20s, or perhaps because he had done so much in his career, he had no need to posture, to own the room or to pronounce. He just exuded class.

A couple of years ago, he released his long-awaited autobiography, A Life in Wine. His publisher sent me a copy. It was an interesting book marred by atrocious editing and I was a bit cheeky when I reviewed it for the Spectator, pointing out all the mistakes. A few days later I had an email from Spurrier pointing out all the mistakes in my review. I felt very small and ashamed, especially as he had always been so kind to me. We exchanged a few emails and he suggested we have lunch together to show there were no hard feelings. As I said total class.

We met at a wine bar, Noble Rot on Lamb’s Conduit Street. The staff couldn’t quite contain their excitement that Spurrier was in the room. Our waiter kept on sending over glasses of wine for him to try. It was an insight into his charmed life. I paid, feeling it was the least I could do and we parted on good terms. From then on he’d email me occasionally with information about books from Académie du Vin, the publisher he was involved with. When I wrote about them, I always triple-checked my facts.

The last time I saw him, was in early 2020, fittingly on St. James’s Street by Berry Bros. & Rudd hurrying, I am sure, to another tasting. As always he looked fit and dapper in one of his amazing suits. Sadly he had not long to live. He died of cancer on the 9th March 2021 at his home in Dorset. The wine world still feels a bit empty without him and I still get hot prickles of shame over being such a smart arse with a gentleman like Spurrier.

This is a remastered version of something that I wrote for The Critic at the time of Spurriers’s death