About Worcester Sauce

SDG at the Young Wine Writer of the Year Award Ceremony, July 2003

I was born in Worcestershire, in the centre of England, on FA Cup Final day 1974 (Liverpool 3 – 0 Sunderland).

In 1996, I graduated from the University of Warwick (sent to Coventry…) with an Honours degree in English and European Literature. In need of a job, I became a van driver for a distinguished Cotswold wine merchant. I spent five years there, completing all the WSET exams up to Diploma level (which I completed in one year). One week after 9/11, I left the Cotswolds to work the vintage in Friuli, north-east Italy. The food was good and the girls were pretty, so I did a six-month stint there as a cellar rat before spending another six months backpacking around the wine (and beer) regions of Europe.

SDG overlooking Sakurajima, Kagoshima City, April 2004

Travel became a passion, so I returned to the UK for a year or so to earn money to fund more travels. Bored senseless by my job at that time, on a whim I entered the 2003 Young Wine Writer of the Year competition. I won. No other gongs have come my way, alas.

That September, I did a brief harvesting stint in Provence before setting off on a six-month Southern Hemisphere trip to the wine regions and cricket grounds of South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. I also spent a month in Japan to escape vineyards for while.

SDG pumping over Vosne-Romanée Malconsorts, October 2008

After returning to the UK, I was recruited into The World of Fine Wine as its Tastings Editor and Staff Writer. After five enjoyable but topsy-turvy years there, I left in June 2009.

I always retained freelance status at WFW and wrote for other titles including The Daily Telegraph, FINE, Artists & Illustrators and various websites. I continue to work as a freelancer.

I live in London SW8, ten minutes walk from the Thames and The Oval. I like eating, drinking, cricket (I am one of the youngest-ever MCC members, apparently), football (Aston Villa), rugby, Radio 4, Sigur Rós, Captain Beefheart, Jacques Brel, Nick Drake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, dogs, pubs, trains and my friends.