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Up for sale "Wine Writer" Frank Schoonmaker Hand Signed First Day Cover Dated 1958.
ES-4251E
Frank Musselman Schoonmaker (August
20, 1905 – January 11, 1976) was an American travel guide writer, wine writer and wine merchant. He was born in Spearfish, South Dakota,
and attended two years at Princeton University,
after which he dropped out of in 1925 to live and travel in Europe. He wrote
two travel guides, Through Europe on Two Dollars a Day and Come
with me to France, and, with the approaching end of Prohibition in the United
States, researched and wrote a series of articles for The New Yorker. While involved in this latter project
he met Raymond
Baudoin, the editor of the La Revue du vin de France,
who took him under his wing and taught him about wine, touring the
various wine regions of France. Schoonmaker
also collaborated in the wine trade with Alexis Lichine, another wine writer, and the pair was
considered the two most influential wine writers in the US for several decades. In
January 1976, Frank Schoonmaker died at his home at 50 East 72nd Street in New
York City. Schoonmaker's importance was both as a writer, the author of
the Complete Wine Book (1934) and later the classic Frank
Schoonmaker's Encyclopedia of Wine, and as a wine importer, who found
American markets especially for small scale growers in Burgundy such as Domaine Ponsot in Morey St Denis and Together with Baudoin, Schoonmaker played a seminal
role in creating a market for wines bottled by the grower/winemaker rather than
by a negotiant' – a merchant/shipper. He started "Frank
Schoonmaker Selections" in 1936 in New York City. In 1972 The 'Frank
Schoonmaker Selections' company was purchased by a division of the Souverain wine conglomerate. It was owned by Pillsbury of Minneapolis, Minnesota. In
1974 the Souverain wineries and the Frank Schoonmaker Import wine business were
sold to St. Helena's Freemark Abbey wine group, and was renamed Rutherford
Hill Winery. The same year a group of 179 grape growers bought the Alexander Valley Souverain
facility. It has since become the property of Francis Ford Coppola. The
Frank Schoonmaker Selections division was liquidated in 1975. As a consultant to such Californian
wineries as Wente and Almaden, Schoonmaker introduced the idea of labeling wines
using varietal names (such as Pinot noir, Chardonnay, or Riesling) rather than semi-generic names borrowed from European regions
("Burgundy", "Chablis", "Rhine", etc.). Schoonmaker
claimed that "the more specific the name, the better the
wine". While Schoonmaker was promoting the practice in
California already around 1940, it did not become truly widespread until the
late 1960s and early 1970s. Robert Mondavi was one of the first to label the majority
of his wines by varietal names and was tireless in promoting the practice. This
has become the standard in New World wine and some European producers are adopting
the practice because of consumer demand.