Matthew was made Honorary Australian of the Year in the UK at the 2012 Australia Day Foundation Gala dinner. He joins an eminent list of previously appointed Honorary Australians, including Lord Carrington, Sir Robert Wilson, Baroness Greenfield and Sir David Attenborough.
In a wine trade survey (Harpers), UK retailers were asked which wine writer has the most influence over their customers. The answer was, unanimously, Matthew Jukes.
In another list, compiled by OLN in May 2011, Matthew was voted the most influential wine writer in the UK. In March 2013 Matthew was given the Journalism Award at the Portuguese Wine Awards. In July 2013 Matthew was awarded the Communicator of the Year award by the English Wine Producers Association.
With over 9 million Daily Mail readers a week, Matthew has the most keenly followed wine column in the UK – he has been Weekend Magazine’s wine writer since 2000. He has also written a highly acclaimed weekly article for MoneyWeek for over a decade.
He won the highly prestigious International Wine and Spirit Competition’s Trophy for Wine Communicator of the Year in 2002.
He created and co-authored Taste Food & Wine, an annual wine guide published in Australia and New Zealand, with Brisbane-based wine writer Tyson Stelzer. Taste was a number one bestseller in its inaugural year of publication and it won the Australian Food Media Award for Best Food and Writing. His fourteenth book, 100 Most Iconic Wine Estates, has been reprinted and is available in Kindle form.
In November 2011 Matthew moderated the Australian version of the Stonier International Pinot Noir Tasting with Huon Hooke and James Halliday on the panel. He has previously been a panelist and a guest speaker at this event. He was also a panelist at the inaugural SIPNOT event in London in January 2011 and again in 2012.
Matthew was the international judge at the Royal Adelaide Wine Show in both 2015 and 2016, making him the first person ever to be invited to judge back to back Shows.
Matthew is the creator of a handful of ground-breaking initiatives – he invented his One Day Wine School over a decade ago.
He publishes a number of annual wine Reports including the 100 Best Australian Wines (the thirteenth 100 Best List was launched in May 2016), the Bordeaux En Primeur Report, the Burgundy En Primeur Report and, released for the first time in early 2017, his Piemonte Report.
The 100 Best Australian Wines Roadshow 2016/17 kicks off at Oxford Town Hall on 27th October 2016 and then visits Manchester, London, Brighton, Birmingham, Colchester, Chichester, Jersey and Edinburgh.
The Great Australian Red competition is the quest to find the finest red blends that ‘define Australia’. TGAR is an unique Cabernet Sauvignon / Shiraz tasting (the eleventh competition was held in September 2016 in Adelaide, in collaboration with Tyson Stelzer) and The Great New Zealand Pinot Noir Classification (the seventh edition was published in early 2014, again with Tyson Stelzer) is the first New World classification of its kind.
Matthew’s thoughts, recommendations and tastings notes are followed very closely by the wine world at large.
Matthew is the Founder & Patron of Touch Wine in aid of the homeless in Adelaide, started in 2005 and Degustation for Dignity (Wine Rules) in aid of St Mary’s House of Welcome (www.smhow.org.au) in Melbourne, started in 2011.
Following a hugely successful event in October 2016 the next D4D event takes place in late 2017 in Melbourne.
Matthew designed an exclusive wine dinner in September 2016, with Marty Edwards at The Lane Vineyard in the Adelaide Hills, in order to raise much-needed funds for www.captaincourageousfoundation.com. This was such a successful event that another date will be planned in late 2017.
To date his various initiatives have raised over AUD $1.5m for charity.
