About Worcester Sauce

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

My name is Stuart George. I was born in Worcestershire, in the centre of England, on FA Cup Final day 1974 (Liverpool 3–0 Newcastle United).

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 the distinguished Cotswold (and London) wine merchant Haynes Hanson & Clark. 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.

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.

SDG with Graham Gooch and Johnny Wheeler at Lord's, October 2005

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.

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, working with Hugh Johnson and others, 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.

SDG at the XVII Avaliação Nacional de Vinhos, Brazil, September 2009