Steven Spurrier joined the wine trade in 1964 as a trainee with Christopher & Co., London's oldest wine merchant. In 1970 he moved to Paris where he opened Les Caves de la Madeleine, which rapidly became one of the most highly regarded specialist wine shops in Paris.

Three years later, he opened L'Academie du Vin, France's first private wine school, and went on to stage the most famous tasting in the modern history of wine, the so-called Paris Tasting of 1976, when a Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon from California scored more highly than some of the most prestigious wines of Burgundy and Bordeaux.

In 1988 Spurrier returned to the UK, where he became a wine consultant and journalist. Today his roles include:

Director of the Christie's Wine Course, which he founded with
Christie's Education in 1982
Wine consultant to Singapore Airlines
Consulting editor and monthly columnist for Decanter, the world's
leading wine magazine.
He is the author of several books on wine, and his latest, The Clarke-Spurrier Guide to Fine Wine (Websters International Publishers, 1998), was updated and reissued in 2001.

He has received several international awards for wine writing, including the Bunch Prize and Le Prix de Champagne Lanson, both for his articles in Decanter.

In 1988 he was made Le Personalité de l'Année (Oenology) for his services to French wine. In 2001, Spurrier was awarded The Maestro Award in honor of André Tchelistcheff and the prestigious Grand Prix de l'Academie Internationale du Vin (only the third time the award has been made since its creation in 1982)