Prial graduated from
Georgetown University in 1951 followed by service in the Coast Guard during
the Korean War. He worked for since discontinued newspapers the
Newark Evening News and
New York World-Telegram before he found work as a feature writer with
The Wall Street Journal. He joined
The New York Times as a reporter in 1970. The column "Wine Talk" was started in 1972, written between news assignments that would range from coverage of building fires to the
U.N. Security Council. Believing that what is in the bottle is much more important than what is on the
wine label, Prial observed that "Shorn of their carefully constructed mystiques, their beautiful labels and clever marketing, many expensive wines are really not that much superior to their less expensive rivals." Prial was the co-editor of
The Companion to Wine (1992), the author of the column compilation books
Wine Talk (1978) and
Decantations (2001), and his writing featured prominently in
The New York Times Book of Wine (2012). He was inducted into the Wine Media Guild hall of fame in 2007, and accepted a membership in the Légion d’Honneur from the French government. == See also ==