Jonathan Healey

When I moved to the south of France, there was (incredibly) no book in any language on the wines of my adopted region, so I wrote 'The Wines of Roussillon' which was published by a Catalan editor in 2002. This opened doors to work in the wine business in my region and beyond. I wrote 'Discovering Wine Country: South of France' at the invitation of publishers Mitchell-Beazley in 2006. Writing these two books and working in the business culminated an interest in wine that began in the 1980s as a student at the University of California, Davis, where I bagged a master's degree. In 2011, I started writing a column on wine culture for France's largest English-language newspaper The Connexion. My mission was to educate and entertain, two things lacking in the 'what to buy and where to find it' approach to wine writing. Interacting with readers, I became struck by how little the French (and others) know about wine and wondered why that should be. Those columns are now collected in my latest and last wine book 'Why the French are Clueless about Wine: Confessions of a British Wine Columnist in France'. I quit the column when I had said all you need to know. So enthusiastic was the response to my column that one reader, a wine merchant in France, suggested to me "You should replace that boring woman who writes for The Saturday Telegraph!" Professional courtesy led me to read some of this wine writer's output. You can read my judgement on the state of wine and wine writing in the book. Cheers!