Monty Waldin

M O N T Y WA L D I N sensed when working as a teenager on a conventionally run Bordeaux château in the mid-1980s that the more industrial sprays were applied to the grapes, the more additives and other corrective treatments were needed subsequently during the winemaking. In the mid-1990s Monty became the first wine writer to specialize in green issues. His first book, The Organic Wine Guide (Thorsons, 1999), published whilst Monty developed a biodiversity project for a Demeter certified biodynamic vineyard in California, was voted Britain’s Wine Guide of the Year. He followed this with the multi award-winning Biodynamic Wines (Mitchell Beazley, 2004). Monty drew on his winemaking experiences in Chile for Wines of South America (Mitchell Beazley, 2003), winner of America’s prestigious James Beard Book Award. In 2007 whilst living in Roussillon in France, Monty was filmed by Britain’s Channel 4 for Château Monty, the first ever observational TV documentary on biodynamic winemaking from pruning to bottling (a six part series broadcast 2008). His other books include Discovering Wine Country: Bordeaux (2005) and Discovering Wine Country: Tuscany (2006), both Mitchell Beazley; and Château Monty (Portico, 2008). Monty has contributed to Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Guide (Mitchell Beazley), Tom Stevenson’s Wine Report (Dorling Kindersley) and wrote the entries for biodynamics and organics in The Oxford Companion to Wine (ed. Jancis Robinson MW OBE, 2006). He has also contributed to BBC radio and TV, British newspapers (The Independent, London’s Evening Standard, Daily Mail), and websites (jancisrobinson.com), as well as to wine, travel and environmental publications including Decanter, Harpers Wine & Spirit Trades Review, World of Fine Wine, The Ecologist, Star & Furrow (journal of the Biodynamic Agricultural Association, UK) and Biodynamics (journal of the Biodynamic Farming & Gardening Association, USA).