A 100-point number printed on shelf-talkers in wine shops across America traces back to one man's decision in 1985. Marvin R. Shanken, who built that scale into the standard language of wine criticism at Wine Spectator and later revived a flagging cigar industry by launching Cigar Aficionado, died on October 29, 2026, at age 83, according to Wine Spectator.

Shanken introduced the 100-point scale at a magazine he had already remade. When he bought The Wine Spectator in 1979, it was a free newspaper handed out in wine shops with a circulation of about 5,000. Under his ownership it grew into a glossy monthly: circulation reached 76,000 the following year and, according to Wine Spectator, eventually topped 385,000, reaching an estimated 1.5 million readers an issue.

He repeated the trick with cigars. In the fall of 1992 he launched Cigar Aficionado on the strength of his own longtime habit, over the doubts of a management team that questioned whether an audience existed. The magazine turned a profit from its first issue, and within five years, premium handmade cigar imports into the United States had quadrupled, from roughly 100 million units to more than 400 million, a boom Cigar Aficionado credits in large part to the magazine he built.

None of it looked likely from where he started. Born October 4, 1943, in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of jewelry store owner Oscar Shanken, he graduated from the University of Miami in 1965 last in his class, then worked his way into a Wall Street investment bank's real estate finance group. A 1970 assignment sent him to California to help a client finance a vineyard purchase. Afterward, the client took him to dinner at La Cremaillere, a French restaurant in Westchester County, New York, and told him to order anything on the wine list. "Frankly, I'd never had any great wine before, but there was one I'd heard of, so I ordered it: 1961 Petrus," he later told Wine Spectator's former executive editor Thomas Matthews. "We drank it and bells went off." Two years later, recovering in a hospital after a car accident on another California trip, he reached his verdict. "I had an epiphany that I love wine, not real estate, and decided I wanted to be a wine writer," he told longtime editor Michael Moaba.

In 1972 he borrowed $5,000 from his sister Elaine to buy Impact, a small beverage alcohol trade newsletter, and kept his Wall Street job until 1975 before committing to it full time. The early going was rough. "Within the first three months, I was certain I had made the biggest mistake of my life," he said. "I had jumped out of an airplane without a parachute."

He bought The Wine Spectator in 1979 and took over as publisher starting with its July 16 issue, relocated the editorial office from San Diego to San Francisco in 1982, and by 1983 was flying biweekly between New York and California after adding the title of editor. In 1985, the year he introduced the 100-point scale, he hired the critics who would apply it: James Laube, Harvey Steiman, Thomas Matthews and Kim Marcus. He had already started the Wine Spectator Restaurant Awards in 1981, handing out the first Grand Awards at a banquet in Windows on the World; the program now recognizes roughly 4,000 restaurants worldwide, and the Wine Spectator Scholarship Foundation, launched in 1983, and its Wine Experience galas have together raised more than $40 million for wine and hospitality scholarships.

He kept adding titles. Shanken News Daily and Market Watch carried trade news under his name, Food Arts joined the roster, and in 2010 his company bought the whiskey journal Malt Advocate, relaunching it the next year as Whisky Advocate. In April 2017 he took the title of editor and publisher of that magazine himself, extending a beat that already spanned wine, cigars, beer and restaurants. His philanthropy tracked his business: company-hosted cigar dinners raised roughly $30 million for prostate cancer research, and the Els for Autism Foundation, which he co-founded with golfer Ernie Els in 2009, has raised about $20 million more through its annual Pro-Am for autism programs.

In February 2019, the Association of Magazine Media gave Shanken its Lifetime Achievement Award. Jonathan Newhouse, chairman of Conde Nast International, presented it and told the room, "Marvin belongs to the elite coterie of magazine makers, the geniuses of our business." He singled out the one habit Shanken's rivals most envied: "In today's media landscape, where the walls between ads and edit are nonexistent, Marvin maintains an iron curtain."

Shanken described his own role simply. "People think of me as a businessman or an entrepreneur," he said in a 2020 interview, "I'm really an editor." He is survived by his wife, Hazel Rudy, whom he married in 1981; his daughters Jessica Shanken Reid, Samantha Shanken Baker and Allison Cohen; his sisters Elaine and Susan; and four grandchildren, Jake, Lauren, Asher and Jordan.

The 100-point score still runs down the side of nearly every wine review published in America, whether or not the outlet credits where it came from. The cigar case at a tobacco shop, stocked with premium handmades instead of the commodity smokes of 1991, carries his fingerprints too. So does every scholarship check drawn on the Wine Experience's $40 million fund, every restaurant still displaying a Wine Spectator Grand Award plaque, and the run of magazines he built from a borrowed $5,000 and a newsletter nobody else wanted: Wine Spectator, Cigar Aficionado, Whisky Advocate, Shanken News Daily.