Katie grew up on a dairy farm in South Australia but found her writing groove (and a serious thing for wine) in London where she worked in music, travel and West End theatre journalism, wrote a weekly column for The Australian Times newspaper and hosted a digital radio show in the backstreets of Shoreditch. She dabbled in Sydney’s world of commercial radio before heading back to Adelaide to concentrate on accumulating keyboard strokes (and tasting her way across the state).
She is the former journalist and wine writer at News Corp’s The Advertiser and Sunday Mail (deliciousSA), and feature writer for SAWeekend Magazine and the Adelaide* magazine.
Previously, Katie donned the editor hat for Broadsheet Adelaide, Fritz Magazine and G’Day Magazine. She was the 2017 Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show fellow and is a regular guest on 5AA and ABC radio.
She was also a co-author of The Highly Improbable Audacious Adventures of Wirra Wirra (winner of the 2019 Wine Communicator Awards Best Wine Book: Trade, Technical or Consumer) and was a top three finalist in the Australian Wine Communicator Awards (Best Published Column or feature) in 2019, 2020 and 2021.
Katie hosts events and wine forums across Australia (including James Halliday’s 2020 Top 100 virtual event). She was the 2017 Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show fellow and was an Australian Wine Communicators mentor in 2019/2020/2021.
If she’s not behind her keyboard she can usually be found scouring the country for stories (and cellar doors) in a tiny vintage caravan called Charlie. Either that, or hunting for treasure in op-shops.
Katie Spain 