International History
BENEDICTION
Que le bon Dieu benisse et toutes le bonnes choses qu'il veut bien nous donner.
May God bless us and all the good things he is so eager to give us.
The International Wine and Food Society has a long history and a dynamic figure, André Simon, (1877-1970) as its founder.
Andre Simon
Simon wrote over 100 books and pamphlets on wine and food. His knowledge of wine was encyclopedic. His senses of sight and touch were as well developed as his famous sense of taste. He was one of the founders of The Wine Trade Club, and at thirty-two was elected its first president. He also co-founded the Saintsbury Club, a London dining club which still meets biannually. Hugo Dunn-Meynell notes that André was not the sole founder but 'co-founder'. He and A.J.A. Symons owned the WFS jointly until A.J.'s death in 1941 when André became the sole proprietor. Although André was undoubtedly the dominant figure, A.J. was no slouch. As well as being Secretary of two famous literary societies, he wrote one of the best selling novels of his generation. He also founded with André, the Saintsbury Club.
In 1932, at the age of fifty-five, Andre's life seemed shattered when he was discharged as Pommery and Greno's agent. With the help of his friend, A. J.A. Symons, Simon came upon the idea of forming a wine and food society with Simon responsible for the dinners, tastings and for editing the quarterly journal. Within three weeks of its inception there were 232 members. Today the International Wine and Food Society has 150 chapters throughout the world and around 8,000 members.
Simon believed that "a man dies too young if he leaves any wine in his cellar," and in keeping with that philosophy, only two magnums of claret remained in his personal cellar when he died at the age of ninety-three.
Autobiographical Sketch
André Simon was born in Paris, in February 1877 with an outsize appetite for food, wine and work, as well as what may be called the apostolic mind, the urge to make other people share his own views.
For thirty years, from 1902 to 1932, he was agent for one of the more important champagne firms -- Pommery & Greno -- with his headquarters in London from which he paid visits to distant markets -- such as South America and South Africa, making his brand of champagne more popular among the rich and the great whom he entertained to their own and his own entire satisfaction. At the same time, however, he was giving, for the first time in the history of the wine trade in England, single-handed evening classes at the Vintners' Hall, London, for the professional and technical education of wine trade employees from 1908 to 1914 and, after the war from 1919 to 1925. He also managed to find time to write and publish a number of books, the first of which being a history of the champagne trade in England, published in 1904, and the most important of which was a history of the wine trade in England published in three large ... volumes in 1906, 1907 and 1909.
In 1933, André Simon started the Wine and Food Society, in London, and in 1934, when Prohibition came to an end in the U.S.A., in New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, New Orleans and other cities where he was so anxious to make people appreciate that wine is food's best partner and the fairway between iced water and fire water.
There are now 130 branches of the Wine and Food Society throughout the English speaking world and all the time André Simon has been lecturing and publishing more books on various aspects of both wine and food.
In 1966, at the age of 89, he published two new books on the Commonsense of Wine in London, and the Wines, Vineyards and Vignerons of Australia, in Melbourne. And he is now working on what he says will be his last book, to be published next year, an Index Gazetteer of the Vineyards and Wines of the World.
André did not live to finish this work. It was completed by his friend, George Rainbird, who succeeded André as Chairman of the IW&FS.