About

  • Wine writer, author, and judge

  • Founder / CEO: The Wine and Climate Change Institute

  • Consultant specialising in viticulture & water use, planting, and adaptation & mitigation strategies

Linda has been writing about, editing, publishing, tasting and judging wine since 1993, and a wine lover since much longer. She began her wine studies when living in Paris, after studying at the Sciences Po and La Sorbonne and completing graduate studies in Nice as a Rotary Graduate Fellow. She has a BA in International Relations from Scripps College of the Claremont Colleges in California. In 2010 she earned a CPE / Graduate Diploma in Law from Oxford Brookes University, Oxford and a Post Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice (LPC), University of Oxford & Oxford Brookes (OXILP), and more recently, a diploma from the Oxford Adaptation Academy, Smith School & Global Climate Adaptation Partnership.

As Editor/Publishing Director of the English edition of Vintage International Magazine, she was awarded the 1997 Prix Louis Marinier, Bordeaux for her writings on Bordeaux wines and published her first wine book in 1999, The Wine Collector’s Handbook, with Lyons & Burford (NY). She has since published Wine and Climate Change: Winemaking in a New World, (Burford Books) in 2014, Pairing Wine and Food, Burford Books, in 1999 and 2012, Wine Tours of the World (contributing author: Alsace), New Holland, London, Good Food Fine Wine (Cassell), London, The Home Cellar Guide (Cassell) and Quel Vin Pour Quel Plat? (Chantecler) as well as editions in Dutch and other languages. She is currently writing her next wine book: Blind Drunk.

She has freelanced for dozens of magazines in France, USA and UK, and acted as a Columnist for Boulevard, France Today, Taste Italia, and others, as well as working as an acting wine judge.

In 2016, she founded The Wine and Climate Change Institute in Oxford, allowing her to focus on viticultural sustainability in general, and specifically, dry farming and water use in viticulture.

As the CEO of Twacci, Linda was a Speaker at the 2016 Royal Anthropological Institute’s Anthropology, Weather and Climate Change Conference in London; had a Poster Presentation at The 1.5 Degree Paris Update conference in Keble College, Oxford, in 2016; created and presented “The Taste of Climate Change”, to GCAP’s Oxford Adaptation Academy at Wolfson College, Oxford,  in collaboration with the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment, in 2016; published Viticulture’s Global Water Footprint: An Unaffordable Luxury in Italy’s Archivio Antropologico Mediterraneo December 2017 issue; was a speaker at the 2019 Climate Change Leadership: Solutions for the Wine Industry, Oporto, Portugal (Water Management Panel); and most recently, is a Contributing Author to the 2019 United Nation’s Encyclopaedia of Sustainable Development Goals, Goal 13 (Climate Action) with her Chapter Title: Climate Change and Water Management, Irrigation vs Dry farming in viticulture: Non-viability of freshwater irrigation.

She is a member of the British Circle of Wine Writers (2017/18 Events Coordinator); The Authors' Guild - New York; The Society of Authors - London; British MENSA; Women in Film and Television, London; Women of Wine, London; and The Law Society, London.

Johnson-Bell lives in Oxford and South Wales where she is a member of the Welsh government’s Welsh Wine Special Interest Group and is writing a guide to Welsh wines.

She speaks fluent French, Italian, notions of Finnish, and is considering learning Welsh.

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