Leading our upcoming tour to Melbourne & Tasmania, which departs on November 27th, Sarah Ahmed is a wine expert you can count on for fantastic advice, insight and recommendations. We caught up with her recently and she opened up about UK wines, the most surprising destination for fabulous wine she can think of and what she’s most excited to do on our Australian tour.

1) What first inspired you to get into wine as a career? A wine tasting course paved the way for my career change from law to wine 18 years ago. The wine genie was never going back in the bottle!

2) Any wines native to the UK that you are partial to? It has been fantastic to see the rise of traditional method English sparkling wine. Talk about the genie never going back in the bottle, fellow Decanter contributor Stephen Spurrier has succumbed to making his own on Bride Valley Vineyard’s chalky soils. I’m really looking forward to showing off Tasmania’s top notch fizz on the tour – Australia’s best by a country mile!

3) Do you have an ‘unlikely’ wine destination you love to visit? Pico – a tiny dot in the Atlantic. The Azorean island was created just 300,000 years ago by explosive magma from the ocean bed and is dominated by Portugal’s highest mountain, Monte do Pico, a volcano. Pounded by ocean waves, Pico is a remote, dramatic, marginal location for vines, which eke out a meagre existence on barren, black lava fields.Now it enjoys World Heritage status, the island’s intricate chequerboard of walled vineyards (designed to protect vines from the Atlantic’s ravages) is undergoing a truly exciting renaissance.

4) What do you look forward to when going on tour with us? As a wine writer, I’m lucky to enjoy special access to wine estates and winemakers. Leading a tour allows you to share that experience in real time as well as through writing. It’s hugely rewarding bringing together wine lovers from both ends of the spectrum – maker and consumer. One plus one equals three times as much pleasure!

5) What’s a good tip for getting the most out of a wine tour? Australian winemakers in particular are extremely consumer-focused and great communicators. They love to hear what you think about their wines and field questions, so take full advantage and enrich the experience.

If you want to keep up to date with all of Sarah’s posts, you can find her online via her official website.

To book your place on her sumptuous wine tour of Australia, click here now!