Saturday, 30 May, 2026
Wine Spectator, Mitch Frank
Peter M.F. Sichel was the world’s most interesting man to sell wine. As a young German Jew, he escaped the Nazis and emigrated to America, where he signed up with the predecessor to the CIA. After working as a spy during World War II and the Cold War, he returned to his family’s wine business, where he helped build Blue Nun into one of America’s favorite wines. He won Wine Spectator's Distinguished Service Award in 1989.
Sichel passed away Feb. 24, but now movie fans can learn more about his epic life story in the documentary, The Last Spy.
Filmmaker Katharina Otto-Bernstein interviewed Sichel and his wife Stella while both were still alive. She also spoke with their daughters, historians Peter Grose and Stephen Kinzer and authors Scott Anderson and Adam LeBor about Sichel’s impact on the 20th century.
Born Sept. 12, 1922, in Mainz, Germany, Sichel grew up in a prosperous Jewish family that owned the H. Sichel Söhne wine house. Sichel's great-grandfather had begun buying and selling wine in Germany in the mid-1800s. As Sichel described in his self-published memoir, his childhood was comfortable, in a house that prized education and gastronomy. At age 13 he went to boarding school.
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