# Vininspo! Podcast Episode 38: Stephen Wong MW

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Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/vininspo-podcast-7294502/vininspo-podcast-episode-38-stephen-wong-mw.md
Podcast: [Vininspo! podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/vininspo-podcast-7294502)
Published: 2026-03-26T21:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://edmerrison.substack.com/p/vininspo-podcast-episode-38-stephen
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/192180711/530b9c1d09fa2d348308908714f6a27d.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/vininspo-podcast-7294502/episodes/vininspo-podcast-episode-38-stephen-wong-mw
Duration seconds: 4488

## Resource

Get all these stories as soon as they drop bt subscribing to ed.merrison.substack.com Follow on Instagram: @vininspo.wine 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…

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## Transcript

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