Necrology

Sherman “Terry” Marshall Robards '61

Nov. 7, 1939-May. 23, 2024

Sherman “Terry” Marshall Robards ’61, P’84 died at his home in Upper Jay, N.Y., on May 23, 2024. Born in New York City on Oct. 7, 1939, he grew up in Pleasantville and Armonk, N.Y., and came to Hamilton from Pleasantville High School.

On the Hill, he was a member of Delta Upsilon fraternity and majored in French, a language that proved essential in his subsequent career as a journalist specializing in wine. He ran track for his first two years but largely devoted himself to College publications, including The Continental beginning in his junior year; he was named its editor as a senior. He filed stories on Hamilton’s sports teams with The Spectator and area newspapers. He also served as manager of the Press Board, joined the Publication Board, and was inducted into Pi Delta Epsilon, the honorary fraternity for college journalists.

His first job as a journalist following his graduation was with the Ossining, N.Y., Citizen Register. His beat was sports, and he became that paper’s sports editor. In January 1962, he married Susan Lee Hayes, who had also grown up in Pleasantville and graduated from Pleasantville High School. At the time of their marriage, she was an undergraduate at Briarcliff College; she graduated in 1965. They resided in Bronxville and summered on Big Bear Lake in the Adirondacks. They had two sons.

That same year, Terry joined the staff of The New York Herald Tribune as a financial writer covering the auto industry. The perquisites of this job included being able to drive his newborn younger son home from the hospital in a Rolls-Royce; to test drive Studebaker’s sports car, the Avanti, on the Bonneville Salt Flats; and, in April 1964, to drive a Ford Mustang to the summit of Pikes Peak, shortly after the model was introduced. 

In later winter 1965, while vacationing in the Bahamas, Terry encountered the Beatles, who were then filming their second movie. At the time, it seemed as though the production was so disorganized that the film did not have a title. Ringo Starr reportedly suggested Tomorrow Never Knows; George Harrison proposed Someone’s Been Sleeping in My Porridge; a third party thought Beatles Two might work. The film famously landed on Help. All this was duly reported by Terry in The Herald Tribune.

After promotion to assistant financial editor early in 1966, just before the paper went out of business, Terry quickly moved to Fortune where he was associate editor and wrote a monthly column. However, he missed the challenge of meeting daily deadlines, and in 1967 joined the staff of The New York Times as an investigative financial writer. 

In June 1968, he was in California covering campaign finance and happened to be in the Los Angeles hotel when and where Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. Terry got to the hospital just before the ambulance arrived and authorities locked down the building. He and a handful of other reporters were allowed to remain inside and send information out to newspapers and other media during the 25-hour period that Kennedy lay dying. The Times honored him as employee of the month for his coverage.

In the early ’70s, Terry was promoted to editor of the business section of The Times’s Sunday edition, and in 1973 he and his family moved to London when he was given a two-year assignment covering economic affairs in the U.K. and Scandinavia. In addition to this new assignment, Terry took something else with him that would constitute a major turning point in his life and career: a contract to write a book about wine. 

His interest in this subject may have dated back to his time on the Hill when, he later recalled, as social chairman at the D.U. house, he helped to introduce champagne parties. While based in London, he took every possible opportunity to travel throughout Western Europe and develop his understanding of and taste for the wines of each country. He later recalled in the Hamilton Alumni Review that “I’d work overtime to get every bit of vacation time I could and used it to go to France, Italy, and Spain. I’d find financial angles about wine so I could write articles and spend more time doing what might be called ‘field research.’”

Terry had found his true vocation. Writing about finance, politics, and other “breaking news” gave way to educating interested readers and listeners in his gradually accumulating knowledge of wine. In 1976, even as he continued as the news editor for the financial pages, he published his first book on the subject, The New York Times Book of Wine. Three years later, Terry was named wine columnist for The Times. Subsequently, he broadcast short commentaries on wine over the newspaper’s radio station, WQXR.

Though not the first journalist to publish a book on wine for the general reader, nor the first to write a regular column on the subject, Terry’s influence was nevertheless extensive. His weekly column was syndicated in 17 newspapers across the country, and he also wrote a weekly column in The Christian Science Monitor. Monthly columns appeared in Bon Appetit, Where NY, and other publications; every other month, he had a byline in The Times’s Sunday magazine. 

By the end of the ’70s, Terry was hosting wine tastings, occasions in which he introduced attendees to a variety of wines, both foreign and domestic, and provided them with tips on tasting wines and determining the relative quality of different vintages. One such event held in New York City in 1979 for Hamilton alumni attracted more than 200 people. In 1981, he published the .California Wine Label Album

Terry’s marriage to Susan had ended, and, on Oct. 30, 1982, he married Margaret M. Caswell at her home in Suffield, Conn. They resided in Bronxville, N.Y., where he had lived for a number of years. In 1983, he left The Times for The New York Post, where he became wine columnist. That same year, he began publishing columns in Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast, of which he was also senior managing editor. 

In 1983, he published Terry Robards’ New Book of Wine: The Ultimate Guide to Wines Throughout the World. Economics professor Sidney Wertimer reviewed the book for the Alumni Review and, after making clear that he was no wine expert, commended the author for fulfilling his intended purpose — “to lay out the information necessary … in simple, readable form. It is meant to be entirely comprehensible to the layperson.”

Having summered at Big Wolf Lake in the Adirondacks in the town of Upper Jay since childhood, Terry moved there permanently in 1988. That same year, he opened Terry Robards Wine and Spirits, Ltd., in Lake Placid, in part because he thought it ridiculous that vacationers in the mountains would have to schlep multiple cases of wine to their summer residences, while also believing local residents were interested to know more about wine. 

He trained his small staff and hosted seminars and tastings that introduced attendees, among whom were wine distributors, to the variety of fine wines both foreign and domestic. The distributors in turn took their newly acquired knowledge to their customers, who ranged from proprietors of high-end restaurants to owners of bars and wine shops. Terry and a local restaurateur would combine tastings and gourmet dinners in support of local charities as well.

Following the end of his second marriage, Terry married Karen Miller in 1991. She was musical director, bell choir director, and organist of the Lake Placid Community Church and served as dean of the Northeast Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. Just as Terry traveled in search of new vintages, Karen loved to inspect the organs at various churches and cathedrals. Her passion for music led Terry to become board member and bookkeeper of the Lake Placid Sinfonietta, a chamber orchestra of 28 musicians. Karen and Terry’s marriage ended in 2001 or shortly thereafter.

Terry continued to operate his business, host wine tastings, and travel to wine-producing locations in a continuing quest to educate himself and others. One result was that on Oct. 31, 2004, in a wine cellar in Burgundy, he married Julie Pelletier Robinson, a journalist on the staff of Antique Week, an author of books concerning certain types of antiques, and a leading restorer of celluloid.

Terry was honored by a number of organizations both in this country and abroad for his service to the wine industry. These included the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, a Burgundian wine society; the Commanderie de Bordeaux; and the Ordine della Vite, devoted to the celebration of Italian cuisine and wines. In 2012, he was inducted into the Wine Writers Hall of Fame by the Wine Media Guild of New York.

When not preoccupied with work, Terry was an avid fisherman in the lakes of the Adirondacks, a hobby dating back to his childhood. He also climbed 41 of the 46 Adirondack High Peaks.

A regular donor to the Hamilton Fund and sponsor of multiple wine tastings for alumni, Terry lauded Marcel Moraud for preparing him for his career as a connoisseur of wines. As he noted in his 40th reunion yearbook: “[I] speak and write French today and visit France four to six times a year.”

Sherman “Terry” M. Robards is survived by his wife, sister, two sons, including John Robards ’84, a stepson, and two grandsons.

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