in vino veritas

Welcome to joellethomson.com

Wine and words have been close to my heart for almost as long as I can remember (the words part) and for all of my adult life when it comes to wine.

This website is devoted to both.

Stories here dive behind the scenes into wine, the people who make it, where their inspiration comes from and what drives them to make the wines they do.

I also host tastings and wine tours by private arrangement, both of which follow on from eight years of teaching Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) and NZ Qualifications Authority levels for the NZ School of Food & Wine in Auckland. This was followed by another eight years of running in store tastings, training staff and curating a significant proportion of the wine collection at Regional Wines & Spirits in Wellington. The store remains one of the most treasured working experiences. 

This website draws on those experiences as well as 30 years of continuous wine writing, editing Drinksbiz magazine (which I still write for) and penning columns for several of New Zealand's major daily newspapers and news stand magazines. 

I hope you enjoy the reading material as well as the reviews. I am a trained journalist and now work in communications after 30 years of writing in high profiles news stand magazines, newspapers and the teaching work noted above. I have also extensively judged at wine competitions and trained wine retail staff with in-depth wine knowledge.

My first wine column was written for Capital Times arts weekly in 1994, a newspaper I ended up editing before heading to Auckland to work full time in magazines for the next 18 years. I eventually combined writing with motherhood, wine education (my own) and then wrote 15 books about wine; all published by commercial publishers. I have the Wine & Spirit Education Trust’s highest qualification, the Level 4 Diploma and currently write about wine for Drinksbiz, Good magazine and NZ Winegrower, the Martinborough Star and my own website. My writing awards include, among others, winning the Gourmand World Cookbook Award for her book Joelle Thomson’s Under $20 Wine Guide and being shortlisted for the Montana Book Awards Best Lifestyle in 2005 for Celebrating New Zealand Wine. 

Pictured left: Dusky Sound in Fiordland, Aotearoa New Zealand; taken aboard a boat which is co-owned by Wet Jacket Winery owner Greg Hay, who belongs to the Fiordland Conservation Trust.