Wine Wizard

Michael Fridjhon

Michael Fridjhon is South Africa’s most highly regarded international wine judge, the country's most widely consulted liquor industry authority, and one of South Africa’s leading wine writers.

With over thirty-five year’s experience in the production, wholesale and retail sectors of the industry and considerable local and international expertise, he is South Africa’s most respected wine judge, commentator and liquor industry strategist. Visiting Professor of Wine Business at the University of Cape Town, he also teaches and directs the Wine Judging Academy run in association with its Graduate School of Business. Founder of WineX – the largest consumer wine show in the Southern Hemisphere – he has directed the event since 2000.

Past chairman of the South African Wine Industry Trust – which determined strategy and administered funding associated with industry-wide business support and development projects – he has been an adviser to the South African Minister of Agriculture, and is a recipient of the French Chevalier de l’Ordre du Mérite Agricole.

He is has been chairman of the Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show since its inception and has judged in countless wine competitions around the world. He was the first International co-chairman of the UK-based International Wine Challenge and is the immediate past chairman of the Five Nations Challenge, held annually in Sydney. He has judged at the Australian National Wine Show, the South African National Wine Show, the Royal Sydney Show, the Royal Perth Show, and the Sydney International 100. He was a panel tasting chairman for WINE Magazine in South Africa for more than fifteen years and has also judged shows and competitions in Chile, Slovenia, and United States of America.

He writes a weekly column for Business Day (for which he received the Louis Roederer International Wine Columnist of the Year award in 2012), and is a regular contributor to wine publications in the UK, France, Germany and China. He is the author of The Penguin Book of South African Wine, co-author of Conspiracy of Giants – An Analysis of the South African Liquor Industry, a contributor to the John Platter South African Wine Guide, The Complete Book of South African Wine, the Hugh Johnson Wine Companion, the new Oxford Companion to Wine, the Global Wine Encyclopedia, and Icons – South Africa’s Champion Wines. In 2012 he joined Britain's Michael Broadbent MW and Australia's James Halliday as an honorary life member of the UK's Circle of Wine Writers.

Michael has recieved another nomination, in the middle of July 2013, for the Louis Roerderer International Wine Writer of the Year. Good Luck, let's hope that he can make it two years in a row.