Word: spurrier
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...Steven Spurrier was in Mumbai but thinking of Paris. He is the British wine expert best known for organizing the so-called "Judgment of Paris" - a 1976 blind tasting between French and U.S. wines in which the Americans improbably came out on top. The contest was a sensation, and sparked the explosion of the American wine market. Now, 33 years later, Spurrier is hoping to witness another revolution, this time in India. He went to Mumbai in November to co-chair the inaugural Sommelier India Wine Competition, in which a panel of India-based experts judged more than 450 wines...
...course, the risks of betting on the next big thing are well known to drinks companies. The Chinese market for wine, for example, has failed to live up to its hype. Spurrier says India is different: the high taxes and complex regulations make doing business difficult, but getting into the market is much easier. "The lights in India are on green," he says. And there is a certain camaraderie between domestic and imported wine producers in India, who face the same challenge of getting Indians in the habit of the grape. At events like the one in Mumbai, they came...
...Detroit's players may face a lifelong pall by falling to the Packers. Or they could steal a page out of Steve Spurrier's playbook and laugh about their dubious place in history. Spurrier, the head coach at the University of South Carolina, who won a national title at Florida and also coached the Washington Redskins from 2002 through 2003, was the quarterback on that winless '76 Buccaneers team. He's a bit more lighthearted about the whole experience and enjoys being remembered for something...
...they're going to forget about us." While members of the '72 Miami Dolphins, who finished 17-0, arrogantly sip champagne each year when the last undefeated team drops a game (as the New England Patriots did in losing to the Giants in the Super Bowl in February), Spurrier breaks open a cold beer with an assistant coach when the last "defeated" team finally gets a win. "Plus, I've gotten plenty of corny banquet jokes out of it," Spurrier says...
This much of the story is true: In 1976, an English wine merchant named Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman), operating out of a small shop in Paris, is consistently snubbed by the insular and snooty French oenophile establishment. So he sets out to prove that offerings from other countries, which he unsuccessfully stocks, can equal those of the previously unchallenged French vintages. This leads him to California's Napa Valley, where he seeks wines that might fare well in a blind tasting he plans to stage in France. There he finds, among other good wines, a Chardonnay bottled by cranky...