418: Steven Spurrier on the Day that Changed Everything

I'll Drink to That! Wine Talk

Levi Dalton

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4.8 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2017

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Steven Spurrier is a Consulting Editor for Decanter Magazine.

Steven is famed for conducting the "Paris Tasting" of 1976, wherein wines from California bested the French in a blind tasting. He discusses that day in May '76 in this episode, providing a front row seat to what happened. He also shares surprising details from his life before and after.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'll drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the beverage business.
0:05.1	I'm Levy Dalton.
0:06.1	I'm Erin Scala and here's our show today. Mr.
0:24.9	Steven Spurr, you're on the show today.
0:26.3	Hello, sir.
0:27.3	Fine, thank you.
0:28.3	Very nice to have you here.
0:29.4	Until.
0:30.4	So you have a very distinguished career in wine, but it really all begins at rugby school with Ben
0:34.4	Hawkins and Hugh Johnson, right?
0:36.7	Hugh was a couple of years ahead of me, and although I knew of him, he didn't have me, and Ben was actually only six months, he's six months
0:46.2	young and I am. He was the same intake, intake as me, and I did know him, but I didn't really
0:52.1	meet, I certainly didn't meet you again until I guess
0:56.7	the mid-60s when I was in the wine trade and he was running the International Wine and Food Society and since then we're sort of always
1:06.1	bumping into each other.
1:08.1	And it was really, you were a port man first courtesy of a family member. People ask why I went into the wine trade,
1:16.0	and I always say that it was Christmas Eve,
1:20.0	and I was 13 years old and probably my first Christmas in long trousers that kind of thing.
1:27.2	I just gone to rugby school and my grandfather in the family house, Christmas Eve, said,
1:35.0	when it came time to pass the recant,
1:37.7	he said, I think you're old enough to have a glass of port.
1:41.2	And so the butler gave me a glass and the counter came round and I was allowed to pour my own glass and I had a sip and I said gosh Grandpa what's that? And he said, Kobins 08, my boy.
	...

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