Steven Spurrier

Just as Degas used paint... Rodin used bronze... Debussy, the piano... Baudelaire, language... So Henri Jayer and Philippe de Rothschild used the grape. Great wine is great art.

Wine is sunlight, held together by water.

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Bottle Shock

Wine

It all begins with the soil, the vine, the grape. The smell of the vineyard. Like inhaling birth. It awakens some... ancestral... some... primordial... anyway, some deeply imprinted... and probably subconscious place in my soul.

— One can't just decide to be a vintner, and then conveniently become one. There are dynasties at play.
— That isn't true in California.
— I rest my case.
— You're a snob.
— Am I?
— It limits you.

— I was surprised by the quality of California wines. And their originality. In the Napa Valley, there is interest in experimental methods. To avant-garde methods.
— What's he saying?
— Where I come from, they call it a left-handed compliment. But I don't think they have a name for it in England. It's too embedded in their culture.

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