Malaysian-born Chinese, Stephen Wong MW moved from Borneo to Singapore and finally to New Zealand to read law at the University of Otago. While studying, he worked in hospitality, and as a club DJ, catching the wine bug in the then-burgeoning wine scene of Central Otago in 2000.

After moving to Wellington to complete his barrister examinations, he subsequently retrained as a sommelier while learning on the job. After seven years working in restaurants, Stephen moved into consulting; helping hospitality businesses in New Zealand and Singapore develop their wine programs. He first started writing about wine for trade and industry magazines in 2007 and across the years, he has written for various publications, including Cuisine and The World of Wine, and has helped judge the 2022 Gourmet Traveller Wine’s New Zealand Winemaker of the Year Awards. Although he has previously provided wine producers with benchmarking and quality/style assessment advice as a consultant, The Real Review is the first time that Stephen’s tastings and reviews will be published for the public.

He gained his Master of Wine title in 2016 and has been actively involved in The Institute of Masters of Wine’s education committee. Since passing he has taken on various roles, coordinating the Australasian seminar, and overseeing the Assignment Marking Scheme. He is now co-chair of the Institute’s Diversity, Inclusion and Transformation Committee. In an educational capacity, he speaks at wine conferences in Asia, Europe and New Zealand, lectures at Le Cordon Bleu NZ and runs wine courses for hospitality, wine industry and the public under the Wine Sentience umbrella (a co-operative based in Wellington, NZ). He works closely with New Zealand Winegrowers on education and masterclasses in the USA, China & Hong Kong and Australia. Stephen is an Ambassador for Germany’s VDP Estates, and specialises in Burgundy, Germany, Austria, New Zealand and natural wine.

Stephen started wine judging formally in 2012 with the national show that was (then) known as the Air New Zealand Wine Awards. He has judged wine every year since, with the exception of 2020 at various shows in New Zealand, Australia and China.

Across 2010-2012, he nurtured the nascent natural wine movement in New Zealand by creating the country’s first three natural wine lists, and was a co-organiser of NZ’s natural wine festival Budburst, which ran from 2016 to 2018 and evolved into Nouvelle, which ran from 2019 to 2022.

In 2020, Stephen reunited with Otago-alumni Andy Williams to co-found Stompy (now TasteMPR), a wine tech startup in California built around a proprietary taste and palate identification algorithm. He is now involved in research on the application of algorithmic learning to aid in understanding taste aesthetics of wine.