The Man. Steven Spurrier (passed 3/9/21); Architect of the Judgement of Paris...Incredible.

0:03 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 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.

0:46 I'm honored, I'm privileged, I'm humbled to have with us 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. 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 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.

1:44 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 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 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.

2:34 And while I always envied my elder brother 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 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 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.

3:43 Yeah. A vineyard in England no less. Right. 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 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 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 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.

5:07 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 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 absolute dream. So he dragged me in and I looked around and eventually the owner, a sophisticated lady said may I sell you something?

5:50 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 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 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.

6:40 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 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 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 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, I placed an ad in the Herald Tribune which said, your wine merchant speaks English. Ring Steven Spiderman.

8:02 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 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, 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.

8:45 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 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 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.

9:41 There was no financial risk. It never occurred to us 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 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 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.

10:36 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 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 luxury stores like Fauchon and Ediyard. So Paris was certainly not a backwater in terms of wine.

11:22 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 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 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 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. 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 international companies were there, it was. It was not an international city like. Like London has become and like Paris is now.

13:35 And with the. With my Anglo Saxon clientele, I certainly kept my French clientele. And the shop 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, 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, 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 was the first privately owned wine school in France, run by an American friend of mine called John Winroth and myself.

14:59 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 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 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 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 so every 4th of July, you know, from 73, 74, 75 onwards, she tried to find American wine in

16:31 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. 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. Patricia had not tasted California wine of that quality before.

17:11 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 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 in September. 75, she went to San Francisco.

17:57 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. 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 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.

18:50 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 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 Raymond Oliver, the chef at the Grand Ver four. I didn't know Pierre Brejoux from the Institut des Applasses controller.

19:32 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 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 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, 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, they would kind of damn the wines with faint praise like, oh, c' est pas mal.

21:27 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 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. 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 the wines on a bit of paper, screwed up the bit of paper.

22:34 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 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 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 divulged while all the whites were being cleared away. And that created a little consternation, of course.

24:07 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 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 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 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 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 basically their second vintage. But I don't think Warren had.

26:16 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 book. I want you to just reflect on this. Chapter 16 of the book

30:01 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 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 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.

30:59 And I wanted to tell the story that, you know, 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. 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 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 our wines far too young. Well, that was proved.

32:13 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. 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 of the stems as they come through the sorting table, these crazy technology.

32:59 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 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, some of the greatest wines I've ever had. Wow. They are, I mean, just unbelievable.

33:46 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. 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 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.

34:37 Because what it did was to create a template whereby lesser known or even unknown 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 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.

35:26 So that's the most important legacy of the 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 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 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 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 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 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 the reviews and you know who the actors are, you know what the story is.

38:12 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 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 suckling, who gives 100 points as though Easter bunnies.

38:56 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 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, 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 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 totally different than what they were buying pre Covid. I'm selling all the brands.

40:25 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 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 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 around the vineyard picking up pesticides.

41:32 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 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 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 27 to 54 in the last few years.

43:02 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. 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 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.

44:24 There's a guy and I said about Armenia, 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 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 once they get the technologies and the winemakers that know what they're doing.

45:15 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 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, 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.

46:02 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 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 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.

46:52 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 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 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 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 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.

48:46 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 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 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, 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 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 South Africa. It was in a 750ml plastic bottle.

50:54 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 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 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 developed a paper bottle with a screw cap.

52:27 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 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 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.

53:13 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 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. There's still a value to the romance of the wine.

53:56 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. 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 vintage Bordeaux or Burgundy or Charonneuve du Pape without a cork.

54:42 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. 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. 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.

56:04 Sweats is sweet. But I was totally 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 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.

56:47 And this is now Japanese gin. Ah. And, you know, of course, they've done wonders with Scotch. 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, 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, that'll be. Well, York is. Well, I mean.

57:43 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 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 and it says Les Ami du Man, the Friends of Wine. I mean, what else?

58:26 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 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.