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There’s a moment in our interview where Stephen Wong talks about playing twin tracks of his life in tandem, a micro-focused intellectual yin and an expansive, warmly hospitable yang, perhaps. Had the yin lacked the yang, perhaps he would have remained a respectable barrister and had his life mapped out for him, just as it was for his Singaporean boarding school classmates. As it happened, chance encounters with Central Otago winemakers and a student job in a Thai restaurant turned this brilliant mind onto wine, in all its aesthetic, scientific, historical, sociological and cultural glory. Wine fought the law, and the wine won.

Stephen is a Wellington-based Master of Wine, and Wine Sentience is effectively the business banner under which he carries out his roles as consultant, educator, wine judge, reviewer, presenter, and more. I’ve known of Stephen for a long time, but we finally met in November 2025 as panel chairs at the Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show in Mildura. Each of our conversations felt tantalisingly short because so many interesting threads emerged, demanding to be tugged on. I suspect everyone who speaks to Stephen experiences the same thing.

No surprise, then, that this conversation ran a little long. There are quite a few names that come up; I will try to cover most of them in these show notes. Among early influences in New Zealand, Stephen mentions his fellow MW and Real Review contributor Jane Skilton, as well as winemaker Carol Bunn (once dubbed the queen of Central Otago Pinot), wholesale wine rep Christine Comerford, hospitality doyenne Wendy Morgan (née Hillyer), late wine critic Raymond Chan, late industry giant John Follas, Gibbston Valley founder Alan Brady and Quartz Reef winemaker Rudi Bauer (both in Central Otago).

Speaking of the Master of Wine, Stephen mentions the first seminar he attended in Australia, hosted by Andrew Caillard MW, at which he encountered Ned Goodwin MW, Andrea Pritzker MW (my guest on episode 2) and Sydney sommelier Sophie Otton. Dr Liz Thach MW is the wine writer he namechecks from his eye-opening first trip to Napa.

In the segment about “natural wine”—taken here to loosely connote wines free from additions or compulsions to be strait-laced adherents to the edicts of the conventional or mainstream scene—Stephen mentions the influential MW and RAW Wine founder Isabelle Legeron MW. Henry Hariyono, then of Artisan Cellars, was the influential natural wine and grower Champagne aficionado who introduced Stephen to the wines of Jacques Selosse and Marie Courtin. The wines of Joško Gravner and the late Stanko Radikon are mentioned when we talk about the inaptitude of the existing wine lexicon to describe orange and natural wines; the same goes for the Pinot Noir of Burgundy’s Philippe Pacalet.

On a more traditional level, great Côte d’Or producers include Domaine Comte Georges de Vogüé, Domaine des Comtes Lafon, Domaine Armand Rousseau, Domaine Georges Roumier, and Domaine Jacques-Frédéric Mugnier. The expression Parker wines refers to the oft-cited, outsized influence of the critic Robert Parker (founder of The Wine Advocate) and his penchant for big, rich, ripe wines.

Finishing with the contemporary New Zealand scene, Stephen mentions the recent deaths of Dog Point co-founder James Healy and Tim Finn of Neudorf, whose wife Judy joined me for episode 34. Elephant Hill (Hawke’s Bay), Seresin, Fromm and Churton (all Marlborough) are cited as famous wineries for sale. When Stephen talks of the rise of the cru or lieu-dit in New Zealand—sites that make a name for themselves with wines of consistently high quality and discernible character—he mentions Churton, as well as Wrekin (Marlborough), Calvert (Central Otago) and Two Terraces (Hawke’s Bay), as well as the terroir-led endeavours of Smith + Sheth and Pyramid Valley, both of which count Steve Smith MW (episode 16) as their modern mastermind.

In other matters, Stephen mentions reviewing the VDP’s Grosses Gewächs (grand-cru dry bottlings) wines; you can hear more about Germany’s VDP from my chat with Cornelius Dönnhoff and Philipp Wittmann. Finally, we have a fascinating discussion about alternative ways to convey and communicate wine, where Stephen talks about the tech solution he worked on, Stompy/TasteMPR, with his old university friend, Andy Williams.

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Vininspo! Podcast Episode 38: Stephen Wong MW