Robert L. Balzer

Was a close friend of actress Olivia de Havilland, who attended his 90th birthday party in 2002.

The man responsible for awarding the coveted Holiday Magazine Restaurant awards has been a wine writer for more than 65 years. He has also been a retailer, an artist, an actor, a restaurateur and even a flight instructor, during World War II. He is also a Buddhist monk. Robert Lawrence Balzer has always been surrounded by Hollywood celebrities and in 1978 he teamed with producer Duke Goldstone and director - writer Dennis F. Stevens to produce a number of wine programs and commercials featuring the leading wineries of France and California. As of this writing he has a daily radio program on K-Mozart (105. 1 FM in Los Angeles) and is still leading wine programs on cruise ships. Robert Lawrence Balzer was also the first serious writer-journalist in America. His love affair with wine began with Repeal, about the time he graduated Stanford and joined Balzer's, the family gourmet market on Larchmont Boulevard, just south of Paramount Studios, not far from the heart of Hollywood and mere miles from Beverly Hills. Customers included Cecil DeMille, Alfred Hitchcock, Ingrid Bergman, and Marlon Brando.

, a classmate at Stanford, was intrigued by Balzer's writing and in 1937 asked him to write a wine column for his newspaper, the Beverly Hills Citizen. After writing the first of his 11 books on wine, Robert Lawrence began branching out. He started writing for Travel Holiday magazine, which published his articles for more than two decades and until recently Balzer was the person responsible for granting the coveted Holiday Magazine Restaurant awards.

In 1936, at the age of 24, Robert Lawrence was put in charge of the market's wine department. At the time, he knew nothing about wine, but soon learned. California wines were beginning to find their way onto retail shelves, after Prohibition's 13-year dry spell. Balzer put out a customer newsletter praising the wines stocked on the shelves of the Larchmont store; Almaden, Inglenook, and Paul Mason. Will Rogers Jr.