A tribute to Steven Spurrier, a conveyor of passion in the world of wine

he crème de la crème of the British wine trade gathered in the heart of the City of London to pay tribute to Steven Spurrier on Thursday 19 January. He died on 9 March 2021 when Covid prevented people from gathering. In their eulogies, Mark Williamson, restaurateur at Willi's Wine Bar and Macéo (Paris 1er), one of his “former recruits”, and Sarah Kemp, who hired him at Decanter magazine, summed up the career of a passionate wine enthusiast who began his enterprising career by taking over the Caves de la Madeleine in 1971, before opening the first Parisian wine tasting school, the Académie du Vin, with Americans Jon Winroth and Patricia Gallagher.

The ‘Judgment of Paris’ tasting propelled him onto the international stage in 1976 in an unexpected way, when Californian wines stole the show from Bordeaux red wines and Burgundy whites in a blind tasting. He successfully gave the wine merchant profession a pedigree, then divided his time between London and Paris, as a consultant for the Harrods department store and Singapore Airlines, a judge and journalist for Decanter, and founder of the Decanter World Wine Awards competition. He was tireless and invariably enthusiastic and optimistic, constantly venturing into new areas, to varying degrees of success, as he humbly admits in his memoirs.