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Virginia Vintners Get a Proper Nod
By Dave McIntyre , The Washington Post
October 15, 2012
“Virginia makes the kind of wines I like to drink.”
By itself, that statement is unexceptional. Spoken by Steven Spurrier, the eminent British wine writer, at a reception in the grand setting of the Virginia governor’s mansion in Richmond before an assembly of Old Dominion winemakers, it was electric.
Spurrier — not to be confused with the former Redskins coach of a similar name — is a consulting editor for Decanter magazine, Britain’s most highly regarded wine periodical. But he is most famous for his 1976 blind tasting in Paris in which French judges preferred California wines over some of the best from Burgundy and Bordeaux. The “Judgment of Paris” galvanized California’s wine industry just as its modern era was transitioning from novelty to powerhouse. Spurrier was the first European to recognize and promote the quality of U.S. wines.
