Marvin R. Shanken, who built Wine Spectator and Cigar Aficionado, has died at 83.

Marvin R. Shanken, the founder of M. Shanken Communications and longtime editor and publisher of Wine Spectator, died on Thursday, Oct. 29, the magazine reported. He was 83.

The start. Shanken was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on Oct. 4, 1943, according to Wine Spectator. He worked on Wall Street in real estate finance before a 1961 Pétrus at a client dinner changed his path. “We drank it and bells went off,” he later told the magazine.

The first bet. In 1972, with $5,000 borrowed from his sister Elaine, he bought Impact, a small trade newsletter on the wine and spirits business. It came with a box of 200 index cards, its subscribers. “Within the first three months, I was certain I had made the biggest mistake of my life,” he later said, according to Wine Spectator.

The magazine. In 1979 he bought The Wine Spectator, a free paper handed out in wine shops, when its circulation was 5,000. He made it a glossy magazine in 1987. Today the magazine has a circulation of more than 385,000, and each issue reaches an estimated 1.5 million readers, Wine Spectator says.

The cigar bet. He launched Cigar Aficionado in the fall of 1992, though his management team told him there was no audience. The magazine turned a profit from its first issue and today has an audience of more than 1.3 million people, Cigar Aficionado says. Within five years, U.S. imports of premium handmade cigars quadrupled, to well over 400 million, the magazine reported.

The awards. In 1981 he started Wine Spectator’s restaurant awards to reward restaurants that took wine seriously. More than 4,000 restaurants worldwide now hold one, the magazine says.

Giving back. He took over the Wine Experience in 1982 and launched the Wine Spectator Scholarship Foundation in 1983. The event has raised more than $40 million for scholarships and grants, according to Wine Spectator. He also founded Market Watch and Shanken News Daily and renamed Malt Advocate as Whisky Advocate.

In his words. “People think of me as a businessman or an entrepreneur, I’m really an editor,” he said in a 2020 interview quoted by both magazines.

Survivors. He is survived by his wife, Hazel; his sisters, Elaine and Susan; his three daughters, Samantha Shanken Baker, Allison Cohen and Jessica Shanken Reid; and four grandchildren, according to Wine Spectator.

Readership and audience figures are the publishers’ own estimates.