About John

Born and raised in Wellington, I began writing about wine in 1998 (a very instructive New Zealand vintage) and am the author of three wine books. I’ve judged wine extensively and spent over ten years as Cuisine magazine’s chief wine writer and regular panel judge.

In 2008 I curated the exhibition Looking Down The Barrel: The Face of New Zealand Wine for the New Zealand Portrait Gallery in Wellington.

How did it come to this? Dorian and Gay Saker’s fondness for McWilliams Bakano and Crest Doré was one early influence on their third child. The years spent living in France in my early 20s, playing professional basketball, were another.

As a wordsmith, I have edited a monthly city magazine, worked in advertising agencies, reported on an Olympic Games, run my own comms company and had short fiction published in a number of journals.