Contributors

Tim Atkin MW is a UK wine journalist with an international following. He writes for Harpers, Decanter, Gourmet Traveller Wine, Jamie Magazine and Imbibe and has own, award-winning website, timatkin.com. He also has a second career as a photographer whose photos have been published in The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and the World of Fine Wine and exhibited in London, Provence, Poland and Lebanon. Tim is the winner of many awards, including the Glenfiddich Wine Writer Award in 1988, 1990, 1993, 2004 and 2006 and the Wine Guild of the United Kingdom’s Wine Columnist of the Year in 1991, 1992, 1994 and 1996. In 1994, he was the first recipient of the Wines of France Award. The following year he...

At a tender age, Ron turned away from a career as a comedy writer to become a sommelier. One could say he prefers spitting to gagging. He served nineteen years as a sommelier in Los Angeles, and was twice named Sommelier of the Year by the California Restaurant Writers Association, primarily because he was unbeatable in the swimsuit competition. He also serves as a professional wine judge in many formerly prestigious competitions. He is one of only one HoseMaster of Wine in the world and writes a monthly satirical column for timatkin.com

Matt Walls began working in drinks selling super strength lager and fags in an off-licence. Since then, he has worked for big chains, small independents and everything in between. He now spends most of his time writing about wine, contributing to consumer and trade publications and timatkin.com. His first book, Drink Me: How to choose, taste and enjoy wine, won the Newcomer of the Year at the 2013 Fortnum & Mason Awards. He also advises restaurants, hosts tastings, runs training courses and is a judge for the International Wine Challenge and Decanter. Matt covers the Rhône for timatkin.com.

Peter Pharos likes to drink, talk and write about the wines of Greece and Italy. He writes a bimonthly column, either covering Greek and Italian wine or discussing vinous matters from an oenophile's perspective.

Margaret Rand writes for World of Fine Wine, winesearcher.com, Gourmet Traveller Wine and is general editor of the annual Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book; she has won various Roederer and Lanson awards over the years, including one for Grapes & Wines (2001). Her latest book is 101 Wines to Try Before You Die (2018).

Robert Joseph attributes his offbeat view of the wine world to a history that includes co-founding Wine Intl magazine and the International Wine Challenge (and running it in places like Russia, China and Vietnam), writing the Sunday Telegraph wine column and two dozen books. Today, he’s editor at large of Meininger’s Wine Business Intl, produces le Grand Noir wines in France and creates innovative wine marketing concepts at DoILikeIt.

Christy Canterbury MW is a Brooklyn-based journalist, speaker and judge. She also writes for Decanter, Wine Enthusiast and Wine Searcher (among others). In 2014, she was short-listed for the Roederer Award of Online Wine Communicator of the Year. Her recent and upcoming speaking appearances include Chief Wine Officer events, ProWein, VinExpo and TEXSOM. A shopping fanatic, Christy previously guided beverage programs across the US for Smith & Wollensky Restaurant Group and around the globe for Culinary Concepts by Jean-Georges Vongerichten. She also directed wine purchasing at New York’s Italian Wine Merchants and Zachy’s. Christy covers the US market for timatkin.com.

Andy Neather was the London Evening Standard’s wine critic between 2005 and 2012. He now blogs at https://aviewfrommytable.substack.com. Twitter: @hernehillandy

Henry Jeffreys is a writer from London. He writes regularly for the Spectator, the Guardian and Food & Wine, and has appeared on the Food Program and Broadcasting House on Radio 4. He is the author of Empire of Booze: British History through the Bottom of a Glass, winner of Fortnum & Mason debut drink book 2017, and The Home Bar.

Harry Eyres has been writing the weekly wine column in Country Life magazine since 2015. He also writes a regular column – L’Ame du Vin – in The World of Fine Wine. Before that he was for eleven years the Slow Lane columnist in FT Weekend, a Times theatre critic and arts writer, the European Arts columnist for Newsweek, wine columnist for the Spectator and The London Daily News and wine editor of Harpers Bazaar. He has written several books, including Horace and Me: Life Lessons from an Ancient Poet (Bloomsbury), Seeing Our Planet Whole: A Cultural and Ethical View of Earth Observation (Springer), Wine Dynasties of Europe (Lennard), The Viking Guide to Cabernet Sauvignon and Hotel Eliseo, a poetry...

After an initial foray into the wine business, Tom decided to pursue a more reliable, respectable trade; he became a professional jazz musician. Wine was never far behind, though, and he founded the website Six Atmospheres after the sparkling wine bug started biting especially hard. Rather than taking a purely regional focus, Tom follows the craft of sparkling wine wherever it leads. His publication 'English Sparkling Wine 2020' remains one of the widest independent wine-by-wine surveys to date, with future updates planned. Tom manages a small non-commercial vineyard in Kent (having once come dangerously close to being left in charge of a commercial one), and maintains an unhealthy interest in the inner workings of grape vines and wineries. He continues...

Rod Smith MW lives and works near Nice in the South of France. He is an educator, consultant, writer, marketer and wine tour leader. A master of wine since 2006, Rod has worked in the UK, Hong Kong and France and travelled widely throughout the wine world and the Far East. He has worked with the leading wine supplier to the superyacht industry in the South of France, and before that in the UK for a variety of fine w

Charlie published Leary’s Global Wineology, a comprehensive guide to wine education programs worldwide in late 2022. He earned his PhD in modern Chinese history from Cornell before briefly teaching at Tulane. He then abandoned academics and became an organic farmer, artisan cheesemaker, and restaurateur in Louisiana. Charlie went on to direct wine programs in Nova Scotia, Costa Rica, and the Dordogne. Random House released his Creole cuisine cookbook in 2004, and he later developed a wine & food column for the Halifax Chronicle-Herald while starting a vineyard in Andalusia. Now residing in Panama and specializing in wine history, he writes for a range of outlets, from California wine shops to timatkin.com to Jane Anson’s Inside Bordeaux.

Celia has never judged a competition, spoken at a conference or won an award. No one is clamouring for her professional palate. She's never been a sommelier - or even been trusted to serve drinks in her waitress days given a nasty habit of dropping trays of G&Ts. She's not an MW, and has no plans to be; the diploma is bad enough. Her 9-5 is content creation for food, drink and lifestyle brands and publications, which happily involves a large proportion of time spent on Instagram. Her sole credentials? Surviving half a decade with Majestic Wine and drinking more than is medically recommended for someone of her size.

Anne Burchett DipWSET is a wine marketing and communications specialist. She has worked in the wine trade for over thirty years in general management, sales and marketing positions. Her latest role before setting up her own business was MD of Sopexa UK, an agency for international marketing, promotions, press and public relations specialising in food and wine. She was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre du Mérite Agricole in 2017. She took a sabbatical in 2009 to study towards an MA in Creative Writing, which she was awarded with distinction. She has written a novel, Tasting Notes, which was published on Amazon in December 2020: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08QXK249

Simon Woolf is a wine and food enthusiast based in London and Austria. His blog www.themorningclaret.com chronicles those parts of the wine world less well travelled, with a particular focus on smaller producers who use organic, biodynamic or natural wine-making methods. Simon is a columnist for palatepress.com and timatkin.com

Born in Spain, to greatly loved British parents whose work then took them to Paris, Clare spent the first seven years of her life in France thereby sealing her fate to love the country as if it were her own. She went to school in the UK but lived for the holidays and the flights ‘home’ to more foreign destinations including Mexico, Belgium and Poland. Clare began her wine life in London with John Armit Wines in 1995 after a degree in French and Spanish at Cambridge University. She joined Direct Wines Ltd in 2000, as a buyer responsible for the Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, and South African portfolios. Wanting to give her two young sons the same privilege she had...

Sarah has worked in the wine trade for 16 years. Her day job is being the Director of 'Swirl', a wine marketing, education and events company she founded in 2006. Every day, in her work, she looks for the stories in every bottle. And then it's her joyful mission to share them. She covers Alsace for timatkin.com, and also writes the odd extended musing on other areas, particularly Bordeaux. Sarah is much in demand as a professional palate and is a panel chair at the International Wine Challenge. 

Rutland resident John entered the wine trade in the 1990s, and has worked with some of its most thoughtful characters, including Paul Draper, Charles Rousseau, Alvaro Espinosa and Francois Billecart. John became an MW in 1999, picking up various prizes along the way, including the Bollinger Tasting Medal. He has written and lectured on wine and terroir, and is the author of several scholarly papers.

After several false starts as a caterer, film runner and book editor, Natasha Hughes stumbled into a career as a wine writer, educator and consultant by accident a dozen years ago. She still can't believe that she makes her living from travelling to some of the world's most beautiful places in order to eat delicious meals and taste an incredibly diverse range of wines.

Wojciech Bońkowski has written about wine in Polish and English since 1999. He holds an MA in Italian literature and PhD in musicology from the University of Warsaw. His book on Chopin’s favourite food and wines, Chopin Gourmet, was published in English by the Chopin Institute in 2015. Simultaneously he developed a career in wine, working in London before returning to Poland where he published eight books and founded the country’s leading wine website, Winicjatywa (2012), and wine magazine, Ferment (2017, with Ewa Rybak and Ewa Wieleżyńska). The Ferment media group now also includes a wine events agency, wine school, and publishing house. In 2023, he became Poland’s first Master of Wine. He currently focuses on the wines of Italy,...

Jono Le Feuvre has always contended that somewhere, sometime, in our big, beautiful world of limitless possibilities, AA Gill crossed paths with Hunter S Thompson, shared a night of exquisite passion, and bore a lovechild. This child grew strong, and embarked on a career as a journalist, writing episode synopses for The Young & the Restless & compiling grooming tips for magazines like Best Life, Men’s Health, SA Sports Illustrated and GQ (back when print media was a thing). In 2010, he co-founded a specialty coffee roastery, Rosetta Roastery, and in 2016 he launched HanDrinksSolo.com - a wine blog that employs prose, cinematic simile and awful alliterations to mask (or at least partially justify) his burgeoning alcoholism.

Chris Wilson is a freelance wine writer and journalist. He’s a household name in his own house and his work stretches right across the kitchen table. A pen for hire, he writes for Decanter, The Buyer, Harpers, Drinks International and the Daily Mirror, and consults on wine communication for a number of leading UK importers. With a winemaking degree from Plumpton in his back pocket he plans to open a UK-based urban winery in the near future.

Farrah is a Lebanese-American wine writer and podcaster based in Beirut, Lebanon. After working in retail, she discovered a love for wine and began to dig deep into the region's history associated with winemaking. Her podcast covers wine stories from the Fertile Crescent and she is currently Contributing Editor of The Wine Zine.

Cong (pronounced "Chong") owns and runs a wine shop-bar hybrid Amphora in Cambridge, UK. Like most children of Chinese parents, she studied Medicine at Cambridge, but ultimately found wine to be the most satisfying meeting of science, sensory satisfaction, and skin contact. Since its inception in March 2022, Amphora has won a few awards: Decanter's Newcomer of the Year 2023 and runner-up in Central & Eastern Europe Specialist Retailer of the Year 2023, as well as the local award Velvet Magazine Pub/Bar of the Year 2023. Cong has been listed in Harper's Top 25 UK Sommeliers 2022 & 2023, and in CODE Hospitality's Most Influential Women 2023.

Oliver Styles is a winemaker and wine writer based in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand. He spent six formative years working at wine magazine Decanter and decanter.com before moving to Spain in 2009 and retraining as a winemaker. He has since worked in wineries of all shapes and sizes across Spain, France and New Zealand. He owns and runs Halcyon Days (a minimal intervention wine label) alongside his wife, Amy. He has written for numerous consumer and trade titles and writes regularly for wine-searcher.com.

Brian Miller is a past president of The Wine Service Guild of Australia, council member of the Society of Wine Education, marketing manager for small, medium and large wine companies and an award-winning public speaker. He lectures and writes occasionally, eccentrically and erratically on wine matters, wine marketing and wine culture.

Miquel Hudin is a wine writer originally from California, now living in Catalunya, Spain. His career in wine started at one of the oldest cellars in Napa Valley, followed by working for Central European and Italian wine importers, during which he founded the Vinologue series of wine reference books. In addition to publishing the website Hudin.com and judging wine competitions around the world, he regularly contributes to a smattering of magazines both in print and online. He concentrates mainly on the wines of Spain as well as Southern France, the Balkans, and Caucasus, having published a highly-regarded guide to the wines of the Republic of Georgia. He was has been awarded a number of prizes including: Best Drink Writer of...

After Bar studies at Gray's Inn, Michael escaped to a life in wine & food. Living in France in the '70s, he represented Bordeaux and Burgundy producers who are now household names. Also a restaurant scout with Egon Ronay for 40 years, since the 90s  Michael has been a journalist specializing in Champagne and the author of two award-winning books on the best bubbles. He writes regularly for The World of Fine Wine & The Drinks Business. Michael covers Champagne and other sparkling wines for timatkin.com. 

Victor de la Serna (Madrid, 1947) is a columnist and former Deputy Editor for El Mundo, a national newspaper in Madrid. He graduated from the School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York in 1973. He is a member of the International Wine Academy and of Spain's Royal Academy of Gastronomy. He has won Spain's National Gastronomy Award three times. In 1998 he created a small wine estate, Finca Sandoval, in southeast Spain, included by French writers Michel Bettane and Thierry Desseauve in their book, 'The World's Greatest Wines'. Victor covers Spain for timatkin.com

Kate is a freelance literary and creative translator and wine writer with over a decade of experience in the wine trade. After spending nine happy, wine-fuelled years as a brand manager working with some of the industry’s most iconic brands and a lot of very lovely people, she decided to change things up in 2022 by enrolling in a Masters in Translation. She now spends her time writing, translating articles and books, showing up at wine tastings, and teaching wine marketing and communication at Le Cordon Bleu London.

Dariusz Galasiński is a linguist and professor at the University of Wroclaw in Poland. He has done research on linguistic aspects of issues traditionally of interest to psychology. He has published nine books on such issues as boasting, deception, and on depression, mental illness and suicide. Ever since encountering Chablis in the US consulate in Krakow in 1989, he has been a wine lover. As he tries to combine his academic interests with his wine passion, he is currently working on a book on how people communicate about wine.

Fintan is a wine writer and educator based in Barcelona, having escaped from Britain a few years before the country lost its collective mind. He focuses on Spanish, Italian and French wines primarily and organises regular tastings and courses in Barcelona, whilst also writing about the world of wine on a freelance basis. Frequently found on Twitter under @winecuentista or at winecuentista.com

Guy Woodward started his journalistic career at AB Europe, a now defunct magazine for the casino industry, before a stint on the sports section of The Guardian. From there he went on to a 10-year tenure at consumer wine title Decanter, latterly as its editor. After editing the independently published Food & Travel magazine and the customer titles of department store Harrods, as well as acting as associate editor of Hong Kong-based luxury wine lifestyle magazine Le Pan, he took up the reins at wine and spirits magazine Club Oenologique. A former chair of the British Society of Magazine Editors, today he runs Grand Cru Creative, a creative agency designing content for wine brands. He continues to write, penning a...

Sam is an escaped English booze-wallah, recently landed in Sydney (thanks to having an Australian wife). Owner of Thirsty Cambridge in the UK and Le Verre Gourmand in France, he is wholeheartedly throwing himself into the contemporary Antipodean booze scene. You can read more of his observations and opinions at his Instagram profile @thirstysaminoz.

Sergey Panov writes about the wine market for Meininger WBI, the Russian newspaper Republic.ru and his own telegram channel Wine Laundry. His main job is marketing projects, and sometimes he gets to do something cool, like an online sommelier contest or a scholarship for sommeliers to edit Wikipedia articles. His most recent hobby is investigating wineries owned by corrupt Russian officials.

Simon forsook a potentially lucrative career as a Chartered Accountant in the City for the joys of the Wine Trade, where he worked briefly for Oddbins and then for over twenty years as a Buyer for Berry Bros & Rudd, where he developed specializations in the wines of The Rhône Valley, Champagne, Spain and the South of France, amongst others, specializations which he continues to nurture less formally as a freelancer. Simon passed his Master of Wine exams in 2002 and in 2012 was made a member of the Gran Orden de Cabelleros, where, as its Treasurer, he has rediscovered some of those long lost accounting skills! What goes round...

Christina Rasmussen is a London-based wine journalist. She writes about wines that act as windows to their environment, and has a specific focus on farming and ampelography. She freelances for various publications, namely The Buyer (UK), Sprudge (US) and recently wrote two chapters for Lonely Planet’s Wine Trails book. All of her musings can be found on her website, www.christinarasmussen.co

Stacy Briscoe is a Sonoma-based wine journalist and editor who produces content for several publications including Wine Enthusiast, SevenFifty Daily, and Wine Industry Network, among others. She also speaks at industry conferences, judges wine competitions, and is a WSET Diploma candidate. Stacy has a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from the University of California Santa Cruz and is often found with a book in hand (and a glass of wine in the other). Follow her on Twitter: @SLBriscoe, Instagram: @StacyLouBriscoe, and her personal website: BriscoeBites.com.

Susan is the head of wine expertise for online fine wine retailer Belmont Wine Exchange in the San Francisco Bay Area, serving customers worldwide. As a consultant, she curates wine collections, designs wine programmes, and specialises in wine and spirits music pairings and events. Susan completed the WSET Diploma while working as a programme manager in the high-tech industry, during which she lived and travelled extensively in East Asia. A lifelong devotee of music, Susan is a classical pianist and holds a Master of Fine Arts in classical piano performance and musicology. She has performed internationally as a Chinese classical and folk dancer. Susan also works with performing arts organisations to grow their audiences through innovative programming and events, integrating...

Barnaby Eales, a journalist, has been reporting on wine since 2015. He is a former Spain, Portugal, and France correspondent and news editor, who has travelled on multiple international assignments, writing for national newspapers, magazines, and online sites, primarily focusing on the Iberian Peninsula.

Anthony Hamilton Russell is the proprietor of Hamilton Russell Vineyards in the Hemel-En-Aarde Valley and one of the leading producers of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in South Africa

Anne runs a wine consultancy (Limestone & Jones) and was previously part of the wine buying team at Waitrose, which she joined in 2008. She has developed an extensive expertise in sustainability: she is Wine GB’s Sustainability Advisor, was a founding trustee for the Sustainable Wine Roundtable and helped launch the Sustainable Wines of Great Britain certification. Photo by Tobias Gorn

When she graduated in journalism from Wellington Polytechnic in 1989, Joelle Thomson wanted to write lifestyle stories, but it took another two years, a relationship with a chef and a stint as a flambé waitress in the Shetland Islands to join the obvious dots: become a wine writer. Her first wine column was in 1994. She has written 14 wine books in New Zealand and writes a wine column for The Dominion Post. She also edits Drinksbiz, tutors WSET, writes for Tim Atkin and adores Riesling.

Dwight Furrow is Professor of Philosophy at San Diego Mesa College in San Diego, California. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from University of California, Riverside in 1993 and specializes in the philosophy of food and wine, aesthetics, and ethics. He is the author of Beauty and the Yeast: A Philosophy of Wine, Life, and Love and American Foodie: Taste, Art, and the Cultural Revolution. He is certified by the Society of Wine Educators and WSET. Furrow is the author of Edible Arts, a blog devoted to food and wine aesthetics and is a monthly contributor to Three Quarks Daily. He has also written many books and professional journal articles about ethics and social philosophy.

Jason is a writer, consultant and tasting presenter specialising in the wines of Italy and South Africa. His work has appeared in Decanter, Harpers Wine & Spirit and a variety of other publications. He judges regularly for IWSC and Decanter World Wine Awards and consults for a variety of clients through jasonmillar.com.

Ken Forrester is one of South Africa's great wine personalities: winemaker, raconteur, bon viveur and restaurateur

Luca Turin (b 1953) is a biophysicist, currently Professor of Physiology at University of Buckingham Medical School. His scientific field is Quantum Biology. He was educated in France and the UK. He has worked in the French CNRS, at UCL, in the private sector, MIT, Ulm University, and Fleming Centre in Greece. He is coauthor, together with his wife Tania Sanchez, of several guides to perfume. He is inordinately fond of sweet wines.

Håvard Flatland lives in the outskirts of western Norway. He is a former chef, pastry chef and sommelier. His wine column in local newspapers has been running for ten years. And he curiously tries to look at wine from a multitude of angles on the web site nattverden.com.

Giles Fallowfield is an acknowledged expert on the wines of Champagne, the region itself and sparkling wines in general, having gleaned his knowledge from regular visits to the region for over 25 years. He also writes about restaurants, food, travel and other wine related subjects for many different consumer and specialist trade publications.

Born in a great vintage (and it wasn't 1961), Jim swopped teaching for wine writing in 1988. His greatest passion is the Loire Valley, which he covers for timatkin.com, spending three months there each year, including vintage time. He is also an award-winning investigative journalist, who looks at scams, particularly wine investment scams on his own site, investdrinks.org. He also contributes to Decanter and has been the editor of Circle Update since 1991. Jim was the IWC's Personality of the Year in 2012.  

Nina is an award-winning columnist and author, with columns in The Times' Luxx, Club Oenologique and the New Statesman magazines; she is also a contributor to Travel + Leisure in the US. Her first book, The Wandering Vine: Wine, The Romans and Me, a wine-drenched journey through the modern and ancient vineyards of England, France, Spain and Italy, was published in 2018 and won both Fortnum & Mason Debut Drink Book of the Year and Louis Roederer Wine Book of the Year. A sometime arts journalist - she was a film critic, Editor of the bilingual magazine on Eurostar and Features Editor of Time Out London - these days she focuses more on travel and wine (although focus might not...

Born and raised into a winemaking family in Burgundy, Pauline has been working in the wine sector for the last 15 years both in Europe and internationally, starting in the market research department of the Burgundy wine office and the French Embassy, before creating her own corporate wine events and education company in Lille, France, before moving to London in 2015. She now runs Areni Global, an independent think tank dedicated to the future of fine wine. Through an extensive programme of research and exploration, Areni Global helps fine wine wineries, distributors and retailers to understand how the world is changing, and how that creates opportunities to be seized and risks to be managed.

Prof. Nic Spencer decided to start a post-retirement career in wine while trapped in a vineyard in Mendoza for two months during Argentina’s Covid-19 lockdown. Having completed an intensive period of wine education, which culminated in a DipWSET from the Austrian Wine Academy, he now combines his main interests of wine, surface chemistry and tribology by conducting research in wine mouthfeel, as well as writing, lecturing, and teaching about wine. Nic is based in Zurich, Switzerland. Being a curious chemist, productive gardener, grape and wine research specialist, occasional artist and keen on the outdoors leads to an eclectic life. Nonetheless, wine science remains his key professional passion and understanding the molecules that drive the sensations and properties of wines continues...

Adam Wynn is from a well known Australian winemaking family. He graduated with a degree in Oenology from the University of Bordeaux and along with his father owned and ran the Mountadam Winery in South Australia. Amongst the first to plant Chardonnay in Australia he introduced French barrel fermentation techniques and later released Australia’s first non-oaked Chardonnay. Now retired from the industry, he and his wife spend much of the year in Japan, virus permitting, and he has for the last twenty years been the Honorary Consul-General for Japan in South Australia.