Wine is made to be drunk,
if not everyday, at least it should be
part of your life. Stephen Spurrier is one of the legends
of the industry. And everybody who comes
into the wine trade, there are certain sort of
key figures who stand out and Stephen is absolutely
one of the top boys. Well, he's
the top writer. And having a fun time. He's trying to make
wine interesting. He writes for
the consumer. I mean he's had enormous
experience, as you know. It's great to be in the
presence of somebody who can contextualize
a sample of wine back across 30, 40, 50 years. He actually did more for
California wines, for example, than anybody
else I can think of. Steven has been, without
question, one of the most influential people in
the modern wine industry. The guy's a legend. My introduction to
wine was through my grandfather, who had
quite a good setup. One evening sticks
in my mind. It was Christmas Eve,
probably '54, when dinner came to
an end, he said I think you're old enough to
have a glass of Port. And so,
he held the bottle up for me, I had a glass of
Port and I tasted it and it was absolutely
fantastic. So I said gosh grandpa,
that's wonderful, what is it? Cobins 1908, my boy. And that was a flash and I already knew that was
gonna be my profession. I taste maybe 50
to 60 wines a day. I mean, during the week, I'll certainly taste
over 200 wines. Out of those 200 wines
I might select three or four to write
about in Decanter. Well he's a very
good actual taster. He's had a huge
amount of experience. We've tested together. And he and I have
a very similar palate. Tasting is
intelligent drinking. Tasting is paying
attention. It's not that you might
not enjoy the tastings. But it is not hedonistic. I brought my own
camera crew. So these are some of
the oldest win sellers in London. They go back
about 450 years. Of course, there is
a method of tasting. There's a sort of logic. First thing you'll do when you have a glass
of wine is look at it. And the color is
very important. That tells you quite
a lot of things. And a nose is important, because it tells
you an awful lot. And the taste just
confirms what you've actually seen and tasted. So the next three wines
are from the Vega Sicilia estate which is
bang in the middle, in the best part of. And they're all 100%
Tempranillo grape. He's always been good. He's a natural. I think you've gotta
be born with a good sense of smell. But it's practice. You've got to taste,
and taste, and taste, and make notes. That's lovely. I love the freshness and
the crunch. One of the things that
has always struck me, from tasting with
him is the amount of experience that he's got. The amount of context
that he can bring to every tasting of every
sample of every wine is pretty breathtaking
really. So the last wine of
the Vega Sicilia range is the Vega Sicilia Unico. It's richly textured. You can only get that
rich texture, that complexity of textures,
from long maturation. This wine is approaching
a work of art where the painter has been
working on the canvas brush stroke by brush
stroke to create a wine like that. Very complex wine. When you have
a complex wine, you can't just get
the bouquet right away, you have to keep on
swirling it so that all the aromas impose
themselves on your brain. And I can go to a week's
tastings and not find a wine that I really want
to write about because I've only got six wines
a month to write about. But I've found two here. Great range of wines. As I understand it, he
started in wine back in the '60s and
moved to Paris. He was an English
speaking figure in the Paris
wine industry, which is obviously
quite a rare thing. But he had an amazing
shop over there called. Then next door he
founded a wine school called Academy Duvan. Which was absolutely
unheard of. An Englishman opening
a wine school in Paris to teach the French
about wine. And that, of course, made
me well-known overnight. Wine school, that's
when I had my mustache, my rather dreadful
mustache. And that's my wine shop. And everyone wanted
to talk about us. We were the flavor
of the month. My wine school was in
the middle of Paris and we were the only wine
shop that spoke English. So California wine makers
used to come to my shop and bring in
their wines and I thought they
were fabulous and well there was
Prohibition in America in the 1930s, so the
California wineries only got back on their
feet in the 1940s. And they were
a young industry. They were historically
they were over 100 years old, but people had
forgotten about them. And so these guys were
making the best wine they possibly could, banging
on doors to try and sell their wine, and
finding it wasn't easy. I thought well why don't
I do something about it. Why don't I try and get
these wines recognized. And the only way to get unknown wines
recognized is to have them tasted blind against
the benchmark wines. And so that's what I did. The judgement at Paris
was a tasting which Steven organized, which
pitted the best white wines from Burgundy, and
the best red wines from Bordeaux against
pretenders to the throne from California
in both colors. We invited
the judges because by that time I was
very well known, and I invited the nine
best palates in France. Everyone was very
happy to come and taste California wine
because they'd never tasted it before. And when he put this
tasting together, he expected the French
wine to win. It was not even the guy
who organized it could have conceived of what
would go on to happen. We had ten wines
in each category. I'd have been happy with
a second and a fourth or even a third and a fifth. I would not have been
happy if my California wines had all come
in the bottom five. As it was, I got a first
in both categories. The nine finest
palettes in France voted Californian
wines top and that was a huge scandal,
huge scandal. And of course, he made his name in
America through the Paris tasting because
the French were appalled. I think the thing with the wine industry is
it moves quite slowly. And so, we don't have
that many of these seismic events that
have taken place. It sort of wiped
the slate clean and created a new
situation for California wine
specifically, but then more generally
wines from Australia, and wines from Argentina and
Chile and other places. And suddenly, the New
World was a thing, and before that, it wasn't. And we're still definitely feeling the
effects of that today. It's now an open game. An unknown wine can
become known by going up against the benchmarks. Warren Winyatski, who's the owner
Staggsley Wine Cellar, whose Cabernet Sauvignon
beat Mouchon Rastio and El Brion, the following
day, when the news came out, his telephone
rang off the hook. East Coast people who
wanted to buy his wine. And subsequently,
eight years ago, he sold his winery for
$185 million. For the French,
it was the first chip in the wall of
French supremacy. But also, it was
a kick in the pants, because they'd been
resting on their laurels. And five or ten years
afterwards, everyone was saying, Steven that was a
brilliant thing you did, the judgement of Paris. It really woke us up. Well here we are in
the kitchen. When it's formal we go
into the dining room. Maybe we have dinner
parties once a month. This is the drawing
room with a nice view out to the garden. Here we go upstairs. This is where I do all my
work and on the walls, these are
Francisco Goya's etchings of
the bull fights. Okay, one of the reasons
we bought this house, personally for me,
is the wine cellar. You've got to watch your
head as you go down, the stairs
are very steep. I've got about three and half thousand bottles
of wine down here. This is all Bordeaux,
this is all what Mr. Fletcher was Clairot. The oldest bottle
I have is a 1978 Chateau Otre Vie,
San Julian. The rule of thumb
with wine is if you buy a case, because
most wines are sold in cases of 12, you drink the first three bottles
before they're ready. If you're lucky,
you'll drink the next six bottles at their peak,
say, a ten year peak. And then, you might drink
the last three bottles on the decline. Even if it's
past it's best, it's always
got something. Because I buy all
these wines to drink, there's no investment. I don't like
paying more than, say, 50 pounds a bottle,
which is already quite a lot from most
people's point of view. This is an investment
in pleasure. It's something
that one shares, wine is all
about sharing. I don't expect people to
understand how wine is made or to know
a great deal about it. The main thing is it's to
drink, not to talk about, not to lecture about. You lecture about it
to learn about it. But it has to be drunk. And of course, he actually knows more
about wine now than I. I think I've forgotten
as much as he's learned. And of course he
has a vineyard, which is extremely bold. If you want to
lose money, plant a vineyard and
make wine. It's a long haul and
extremely expensive. Fortunately, he's
quite well off. So that's Pride Valet. This is our very
first vintage. It was picked two weeks
after my 70th birthday, and we only made
490 bottles, and we've sold it all. I've got two left. But anyway,
as English sparkly wine, this is mostly
Chardonnay. In the vineyard with
have 55% chardonnay, 25% Pinot Noir, and
20% Pinot Meunier, those are all the classic
champagne grapes. This is Chardonnay, part of the original
planting in 2009. A very, very good
vineyard, facing west. Up there is
Pinot Menunier, Pinot Noir also 2009. So that bit and this bit
were our first planting. In '87 I saw there
was a lot of chalk even on the surface. So, I took a little
block of chalk back to Paris where I worked
and showed it to a friend of mine who was
working with me. And I said, where do
you think that's from? And he said well,
Champagne of course. I said no it's not,
it's from Dorset. He said well, you should
plant a vineyard. And so that's really
where the idea started. Up by the vineyards,
past the sheep, you can see that
line of chalk. And you can see we only
have that much topsoil, and the rest is chalk. This is why we really
like champagne. This is the winery. He does everything, and it's safe to say that
had not been here, I wouldn't have planted
the vineyard, because I had no intention of
ever building a winery. Ian, good to see you. Good to see you. Making Steven's wine. Slightly intimidating
perhaps as well. Yeah, I'm very please to
have the opportunity. Good God.
I was here about a month and half ago and this
was completely cloudy. Gosh. Pretty good. Comparing this to the
first vintage we made, '11, It's much bigger,
which is good to a certain point
because it's more robust. But also, you need to
retain that freshness. And that has a freshness
now, very good. Having been in the wine
trade all my life for me it's a culmination. I've kind of
completed the circle, having begun by being
a wine merchant, selling wine, and a wine
taster, this is an area of wine that I'd never
thought of going into. If I can produce a wine
which my colleagues on the wine
writing side and on the wine retailing
side enjoy and will appreciate and buy,
then I've succeeded. Equally important, if I
can produce a wine which I like,
then I've succeeded.
Lol at first glance I thought they were talking about the ol' ball coach. Derp.
Met Steven yesterday at a Decanter event in London, great guy and very easy to talk to!
What a nice guy! If I Could contribute half as much to the wine world as him I'd die a happy man.