Rikki Brown Named 2025-26 Spurrier-Winiarski Wine Writer-in-Residence at UC Davis
Resident will use library collections to research the historical and contemporary relationships between Georgian and American viticulture
On the heels of the 50th anniversary of the 1976 Judgment of Paris wine tasting, the UC Davis Library is pleased to announce the 2025-2026 recipient of the Spurrier-Winiarski Wine Writer-in-Residence Award: Rikki Brown, Ph.D. candidate and scholar at UC Santa Cruz.
The $50,000 award supports a three-month residency at UC Davis for a writer who offers new perspectives to the canon of wine writing, so they can conduct research using the library’s extensive wine collections.
Brown was selected due to her unique focus on Georgia, a non-hegemonic European wine country that has some of the most robust and historic winemaking, viticulture and vinicultural practices in the world.
“While the library received several strong proposals, we were particularly impressed by Rikki’s innovative topic and robust plan for using UC Davis Library materials and collections to advance her research,” said Audrey Russek, the library’s head of Food and Drink Collections.
As the 2025-2026 Wine Writer-in-Residence, Brown will have access to the full breadth of the “greatest wine library in the world,” including contributors to the Warren Winiarski Wine Writer Collections, the A.W. Noling Hurty-Peck Collection of Beverage Literature, primary sources on Georgian wine in Russian and Georgian, and complementary resources such as the library’s Map Collection.
Brown’s proposed project, The Other Georgia: Transnational Grapes, Viticultural Resistance, and South Caucasus-American Winemaking Relations, will examine the “immigration” of both Georgian grape varietals and people to the United States, illustrating a historic relationship between the two countries dating back to the phylloxera outbreak in the 19th century.
Six months following the conclusion of the residency, Brown will submit a manuscript based on her research to further contribute to UC Davis’ body of wine writing and research.
About Rikki Brown
Rikki Brown is a Ph.D. candidate in cultural anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she studies the influence of technology, sociality and politics in the Georgian wine industry. Brown’s work has been featured in Anthropology News, and she has submitted papers to the academic journals Sociétés & Représentations and Agriculture and Human Values.
In 2025, she received the Christine Wilson Graduate Student Paper Award from the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition for her manuscript “Rarity and Heritage: Endemic Grapes and Practices of Sovereignty in Georgian Winemaking.” She has been a National Science Foundation fellow, and frequently gives talks about her research to share the history, flavors, and distinctions that encompass a bottle of Georgian wine.
Spurrier, Winiarski and the 1976 Judgment of Paris
The 1976 Judgment of Paris blind wine tasting (not to be confused with the ancient Greek myth) upended the previously established order in the wine world, putting California firmly on the map as a premier wine region.
British wine merchant Steven Spurrier and his colleague Patricia Gastaud-Gallagher brought a dozen Napa wines to Paris and organized the tasting through their Académie du Vin wine school to showcase the strength of California wines alongside their French counterparts.
Warren Winiarski, founder and former winemaker of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, produced the event’s winning red: the legendary 1973 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon.
The UC Davis Library is proud to honor the memory of both Winarski and Spurrier, and their historic contributions to the wine world, through the wine writer-in-residence program.