Robert Lawrence Balzer, one of America’s best known wine writers, died December 2, 2011 at his home in Orange, California at the age of 99. Balzer, the Dean of American wine writing, began his wine writing career in 1937 and wrote the first of 11 books on wine and food, California’s Best Wines, in 1948.
Balzer’s storied life unfolded like the script of a Hollywood movie. Called the “Wine Merchant to the Stars,” Balzer was close friends with many Hollywood stars including Olivia De 
Haviland, Joan Fontaine, Gloria Swanson, Ronald Reagan, Rosalind Russell and Marlon Brando, selling them wine at his family’s gourmet market Balzer’s on Larchmont in Los Angeles. He was also known as an entertaining and popular wine educator.
Born in Des Moines, Iowa, Balzer was a graduate of Stanford University. Throughout his career as a wine writer, he rubbed elbows with noted winemakers and vintners such as Rodney Strong, Andre Tchelistcheff, August Sebastiani, Ernest Gallo, Jack Davies and Robert Mondavi. During a break from writing about wine and food, mainly through his popular wine column in the Los Angeles Times magazine, Balzer studied to be a Buddhist monk in Cambodia.
I first met Robert Lawrence in 1978, my first year as a novice wine judge at the Los Angeles County Fair Wine Competition. Although we never served on the same judging panel, he was always available to mentor and suggest ways that of avoiding the pitfalls that sometimes plague new wine judges. The following year, when I became Editor of The Wine Spectator, Balzer signed on as one of the first contributors to the fledgling wine publication. He was a tireless promoter of all wine, but had a special fondness for California wine, something I became aware of at the various wine competitions we both judged at and wine symposia we both attended.
Balzer was the life of any party he attended and was an accomplished dancer, among his many other talents. Year after year, at the Kapalua Wine Symposium on Maui, the best dancers on the floor were Robert Balzer and Charlotte Strong, who with her husband Rodney, had been professional dancers before retiring to enter the wine business.
Details are still being worked out for a public memorial in January. Meanwhile, everyone who knew Robert Lawrence Balzer will remember him as a devoted champion of wine and the appreciation of the civilized fashion of a wine-centric lifestyle that includes, good food, great wine and pleasant conversation.
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