Andrew Jefford

Andrew Jefford was born in Gloucestershire but grew up beneath the wide skies of Norfolk. Having discovered the pleasures of wine in his early teens, he learned more about it by making it – from carrots, apples, nettles, elderflowers ... and grape-juice concentrate. The quiet plop-plop-plop of fermenting wine in air-locked demi-johns tissued the night silence of the family home, while the finished wines (swallowed with a grimace) contributed to mealtime merriment. After study at the Universities of Reading and East Anglia, he worked first in publishing as an editor and then, from 1988, as a wine writer, taster, educator, tour guide and occasional radio presenter (on BBC Radio 4). He has written for many British newspapers, notably The Evening Standard and The Financial Times, and continues to contribute columns to Decanter and The World of Fine Wine; he also acts a co-chair for the Decanter World Wine Awards and as academic advisor to The Wine Scholar Guild. His books include The New France (2002), Andrew Jefford’s Wine Course (2016) and Whisky Island (2019), a book about the Hebridean island of Islay. He has also published poems in The Spectator and The Independent. Andrew and his family moved to Australia in 2009 and to France in 2010, where they still live. He enjoys music and walking, but no longer makes his own wine.