Jon Winroth

Jon Winroth
Jon Winroth after receiving the distinction of Chevalier de l'Ordre du Mérite Agricole, May 30, 2004
Born	Jon Winroth Broneer November 13, 1935 Athens, Greece
Died	July 15, 2006 Tours, France
Education	Sorbonne
Occupation	Wine critic
Spouse(s)	Doreen
Children	Eric, George
Parent(s)	Oscar Broneer, Verna Pauline Anderson

Jon Winroth Broneer (born November 13, 1935 in Athens, Greece; died July 15, 2006 in Tours, France) was an American wine critic who lived and worked in France.

Second son of Oscar Broneer, a Swedish immigrant to the United States who became a professor of archaeology, Jon Winroth spent part of his childhood in Greece but was mainly educated in the U.S., where he met his future wife, Doreen. After finishing his college studies summa cum laude and winning a Fulbright grant, he and Doreen sailed for France aboard the Liberté. There he discovered an approach to life that suited his own outlook, and he stayed, forging an international career in wine and building a family.

Broneer began by studying French, which lead to his Fulbright grant and a year of study in Poitiers. He worked on a Doctorat d'université at the Sorbonne on Ali Pasha of Yannina, and spent 1964 to 1966 in Greece studying fortresses built by Ali Pasha in Epirus.

Back in France, his interest in gastronomy and wine grew, from a passing interest which early friends in France had sparked to a serious search for what eluded him. Winroth published his first article on wine on January 31, 1967, in the international edition of The New York Times, using his first and middle names — the middle (Winroth), a maternal family name, means “wine root” in old Swedish. The article concerned the “Coupe du meilleur pot”, a distinction awarded annually by the gastronomic journal La Table et la Route and by the Académie Rabelais to a Paris bistrot for its good, typical grower wines. Subsequently, he appeared regularly in this paper, which in 1967 became the International Herald Tribune.