Frank Schoonmaker

Who was Frank Schoonmaker?

Frank Musselman Schoonmaker 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 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 14 East 69th Street in New York City.