Frank Schoonmaker

Frank Musselman Schoonmaker (August 20, 1905 – January 11, 1976) was an American travel guide writer, wine writer and wine merchant. He was born in Spearfish, South Dakota, and attended two years at Princeton University, after which he dropped out of in 1925 to live and travel in Europe. He wrote two travel guides, Through Europe on Two Dollars a Day and Come with me to France, and, with the approaching end of Prohibition in the United States, researched and wrote a series of articles for The New Yorker. While involved in this latter project he met Raymond Baudoin, the editor of the La Revue du vin de France, who took him under his wing and taught him about wine, touring the various wine regions of France.

Schoonmaker also collaborated in the wine trade with Alexis Lichine, another wine writer, and the pair was considered the two most influential wine writers in the US for several decades. In January 1976, Frank Schoonmaker died at his home at 50 East 72nd Street in New York City.

In 1939 Schoonmaker joined a new division of the U.S. Army known as the Office of Strategic Services or O.S.S, where he was stationed in Spain. He received the Bronze Star for his work with the O.S.S. After the war, Alexis Lichine negotiated a full partnership with Schoonmaker, but the wine partnership ended bitterly. In 1946, after many months of trying to find a compromise that would work for both, Lichine went to work as the import-export manager for United Distillers of America.

Schoonmaker's importance was both as a writer, the author of the Complete Wine Book (1934) and later the classic Frank Schoonmaker's Encyclopedia of Wine, and as a wine importer, who found American markets especially for small scale growers in Burgundy such as Domaine Ponsot in Morey St Denis and the Marquis d'Angerville in Volnay. Together with Baudoin, Schoonmaker played a seminal role in creating a market for wines bottled by the grower/winemaker rather than by a negotiant' – a merchant/shipper. He started "Frank Schoonmaker Selections" in 1936 in New York City.

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