My experience and involvement in wine is pretty diverse, more than most. I grew up in Adelaide in South Australia and, with famous wineries like Penfolds, Henschke, Rockford and d’Arenberg literally just up the road, I was around wine from a young age.
I started working with wine professionally as a 20-year-old in some of Sydney’s best restaurants, tasting through all the various portfolios and I worked hard on getting across Australian wine at a time when it was starting to really boom on the world stage.
My first ‘wow’ bottle was a Leo Buring ‘Leonay’ Watervale Riesling from 1979 and it blew my mind. Unlike anything I had ever tasted, it’s probably one of the reasons I have a huge collection of Riesling today.
After that experience, wine really gripped me tight and all I wanted to do was to taste as widely as I could, concentrating next on the great wines of Europe and the US, as well as from my neighbours over in New Zealand. I worked my way up the Sommelier ranks and won Best Australian Sommelier twice (2000 and 2002). That’s when the invitations to start writing came along.
Educating has always been really important to me and sharing great bottles, either by writing about them or opening them from my collection, is what I live for. As most of you will know, there’s nothing better than being in a room where great bottles are being shared generously.
I started making wine, first with my then-sommelier brother, around the same time I started writing and this has given me a deep, first-hand understanding of just what it takes to make a great wine. It’s deepened my respect for these wines immensely.
Today I taste and write about wine from right around the world and this involves a lot of travel (not quite as much as James!). I visit regions and producers and taste at competitions through Australia, New Zealand, Asia, London and beyond.
This year I’ll be visiting France, Italy, Croatia, Spain, New Zealand, the US in my search for great wine and I look forward to sharing these wines with you and meeting many of you at the events we have planned. And of course, I’ll also be talking to you each and every week here at JamesSuckling.com.
Happy tasting!
