Alexis Lichine; Russian-Born Evangelist of Wines, Spirits

Alexis Lichine, the Russian-born evangelist of wine whose “New Encyclopedia of Wines and Spirits” is considered a definitive work on the practices and pleasures of such beverages, died Thursday at Prieure, the former Benedictine monastery near Bordeaux that had been his home since 1951.

The wine maker and author was 75 and had suffered from lung cancer, said Robert Balzer, wine columnist for Los Angeles Times Magazine and a longtime friend of Lichine.

Lichine was born in Moscow and with his parents fled Russia for France after the 1917 Revolution. He grew up speaking Russian, French and English.

He worked as an advertising salesman for the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune and proved so successful he was sent to North Africa to sell ads for special travel sections. Then he went to the Bordeaux and Burgundy sections of France, using his sales skills on the vintners there.

After the repeal of Prohibition in this country he moved to Philadelphia and rose from delivery boy in a store to manager of the wine department for a large firm of liquor distributors.

By the late 1930s he was working as a wine importer and began making the countless trips back and forth to Europe that eventually found him spending half his life in France and the other half in the United States.

Naturalized Citizen

He became a naturalized U.S. citizen and served as an Army major on the staff of Gen. Dwight E. Eisenhower during World War II, handling the arrangements for all of Eisenhower’s formal dinners. He received the U.S. Bronze Star and countless French, Moroccan and Tunisian medals.

Lichine was an early advocate of wine makers bottling their own product. “The man who made the wine should be proud to have his name on the bottle,” was an often-quoted saying.

With some partners he bought the 16th-Century Prieure in the village of Margaux “because I could sense an air of enchantment about the property.” In addition to that ethereal consideration, he said, he wanted to bring the enthusiasm he had for selling wines into their production.

Eventually he bought out his associates, lived in what had been the Prieure’s monastery and supervised the expansion of his vineyards that came to produce what Balzer said were “superb values.”

At his death the Prieure-Lichine boasted some of the finest vineyards in the area on its 163 acres, a six-fold increase since his purchase.

His opinions and writings, including those in the encyclopedia which was published and revised in several languages, including Japanese, were pointed and involved not only wines but cultures.

He told Frenchmen that they “will find a finer selection of wines in Des Moines, Minneapolis or St. Louis than in any city in France.”

Conversely he would tell Americans that “a hamburger is not really a gastronomic delight and so far as I’m concerned coffee, beer and diet pop are really not appropriate nourishment for human beings.”

Lichine was once married to film actress Arlene Dahl. He is survived by two children from a previous marriage.