I came to wine through stories rather than science.

My father loved Syrah and opera, preferably together and preferably with his eyes closed. As a teenager I found this mortifying. It took me thirty years, and a hill in the Northern Rhône, to understand what he'd been doing.

Before wine, there were words. I trained as a journalist and became one of the early female editors and publishers in Australia, on titles including Follow Me, Sydney Inc and Billy Blue, and worked as a researcher on the television series World Around Us. Then hospitality: I co-founded the William Blue Hotel Management School in 1985, and in 2003 Kokomo Resorts and the Sitara Villa Group in Indonesia.

Now I live in the South of France and have come back to what I started with: writing. My subject is wine, and why it tastes of where it comes from.

I'm a writer who knows how to research, and I've spent years learning wine seriously enough to ask better questions.

Then I go and ask them: in the vineyard, in the cellar, at the table, and occasionally on a tourist train. I also choose wine for a small number of private clients. It's the same work, really: listening, asking, and finding wines that belong. About curation →

Wine study

• French Wine Scholar Wine Scholar Guild, with Honours
• WSET Level 3 with Merit
• Bourgogne Masters Wine Scholar Guild, in progress

About this site

Travels with Somm doesn't mean “come travelling with a sommelier”. It means: come with me while I work this out. Stories, field notes, a book in progress, and a page on how landscape shapes wine for anyone who'd like to start from the ground up.