Bill Shepard profile

Our Wine Editor, Bill
Shepard, has lived extensively in France and speaks French fluently. A college
French major, Bill then had a Fulbright grant and taught at the Lycee Jean
Giraudoux, Chateauroux (Indre). During his leisure hours, Bill served as
translator at chateaux tours throughout the Loire Valley. He also notes that he
missed by just a year having the actor Gerard Depardieu as his student at
Chateauroux.


Bill took his law degree from
Harvard, then postgraduate infantry training at Fort Benning, Georgia, “which
was harder.” His diplomatic career included tours as Consul or Political
Officer at our Embassies in Singapore, Saigon, Budapest and Athens. He then
served as Consul General in Bordeaux, where he got to know each of the 20 departements
of the Southwest region thoroughly.


Bill has personally visited and
assessed the wines at over sixty of the finest wine chateaux of Bordeaux,
Burgundy and Champagne, including every first and second growth of the Medoc
region of Bordeaux, every primary growth of Pomerol and St. Emilion, as well as
Chateau d’Yquem, the Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, the Domaine Comte de Vogue,
Taittinger and Pol Roger, and other leading estates, from Alsace to Chateauneuf
du Pape.


His wine columns may be found in
Bonjour Paris and The Wine Spectator. His book, Shepard’s Guide to Mastering
French Wines, expands on his 75 Bonjour Paris wine columns. He hopes that
his writings will add to your own enjoyment of French wines. He considers the
now popular point scoring systems for wines to be misleading and simplistic
distractions. See if you agree!
“Click here to order Shepard's Guide to Mastering French Wines: Taste Is for Wine: Points Are for Ping Pong”