Huon Hooke

A Roseworthy wine marketing graduate with a first qualification in journalism, fifteenth year and longest serving judge on the Sydney International’s Judging Panel, Huon Hooke is the multi-award winning wine correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald, Australia's oldest and largest circulation broadsheet, where his weekly column has appeared since 1987.

It is a wide ranging column, always highly readable, covering all manner of wine related subjects from in-depth regional and varietal reports, multi-million dollar auctions of the world’s rarest wines, to low-priced local quaffers. If there is news or an interesting story from the wide world of wine, you will find it in Mr Hooke’s column.

It is a trend setting column. He was filing stories on Spanish, Italian and New Zealand wines, for example, long before their current increasing local popularity. He was a leader in the local resurgence of interest in the many facets of Riesling. One of his current re-occurring themes is persuasive support for a less exuberant, more restrained Australian wine style, wines better suited to the dining table.

A full-time professional winewriter, Huon Hooke travels extensively and judges several competitions each year both within Australia and internationally, watching for emerging directions and trends. He has been Chairman of Judges for “Australian Restaurant Wine List of the Year” Awards, since it’s inception in 1994.

He is contributing editor to Australian Gourmet Traveller’s “The Wine Magazine” and wine writer for many other publications, his articles featuring in several of the world’s most read and respected wine and lifestyle magazines including Decanter (UK) and Slow Food Guide to Wines of the World (Italy).

He is co-author of Penguin’s annual “Good Australian Wine Guide”, Author of “Words on Wine” an anthology of forty stimulating essays on wine (SMH Books) and the acclaimed biography of the creator of Penfold’s Grange, “Max Schubert, Winemaker” (Kerr Publishers).