High priest of wine James Halliday anoints his deputy

James Halliday has some rather shocking news for loyal fans: it is time to pass the baton — and the pen — to the next generation.

Stepping back, but not down … veteran wine writer James Halliday in his cellar at Coldstream Hills in the Yarra Valley. Picture: Aaron Francis

Globally respected wine reviewer, critic and judge James Halliday has some rather shocking news for his army of loyal fans in Australia and throughout the world: he isn’t going to live forever, and it is time to pass the baton — and the pen — to the next generation.

Having steered and been the spiritual leader for 30 years of his famous Halliday Wine Companion — a telephone book-thick bible on every Australian wine that is worth knowing about and quaffing each vintage — he ­believes it is time for him to step back and cultivate a new vineyard of writers and reviewers.

“But I am certainly not retiring,” Halliday, who celebrated his 82nd birthday last month, tells The Australian. He will still have a hand in his annual Companion, but a new era has begun with the selection of respected wine critic Tyson Stelzer as editor.

Halliday also won’t blame the coronavirus pandemic on his smaller role in the wine bible that bears his name; it’s just a reflection of the fact he is but mortal.

“I am getting too old for this game,” he says. “COVID had no involvement at all. The decision was progressive, and you have to go back to 2012 or thereabouts when I got new people to do some of the tasting with me and that move back then was a recognition that I wasn’t going to live forever.

“It’s been apparent to me there has to be someone who can commit a great deal of time and effort to it. This is more than just being a panellist — it’s been obvious that someone has to step into the role of editor, and I’ve said from the outset Tyson almost self-selects.”

Stelzer is a multi-award-winning wine writer, television host and producer and international speaker. He was named The International Wine & Spirit Communicator of the Year 2015 in the International Wine & Spirit Competition, and The International Champagne Writer of the Year 2011 in The Louis Roederer International Wine Writers’ Awards.

He has reviewed sparkling wines for the Companion in the past and produces an annual Champagne guide, and it was this tome that attracted Halliday.

“There is one bloke who I think, and only one, that I can think of and know who can step in more or less to this ‘godfather role’ of editor, and Tyson is the man who can do it. It was that amazing Champagne book that told me yes that guy clearly can get his stuff together and deliver on time.

Stelzer is honoured, but understandably somewhat nervous. “The opportunity to take on this tremendous legacy of James Halliday is obviously an extreme privilege but also quite terrifying,” he says. “It is impossible to overstate the significance of what James has achieved in Australian wine communication in now more than a third of a century.

“I am very conscious the wine world is vastly different to what it was in 1986 when he published his first edition of what to become the Companion.

“It is my mandate and aspiration to maintain every bit of the format, scope, integrity and spirit that James has infused in the Companion, and at the same time to take it forward in new and ­dynamic ways.”

This would include wine reviewers who specialise in certain regions, as well as ­inviting younger reviewers and female reviewers to have a diversity of tasters.

Meanwhile, if there is one key value Halliday believes he must pass on to Stelzer it is the one that has carried the Companion for three decades — integrity.

“I think the number one thing I valued and I know is understood very well by Companion publishers Hardie Grant and by Tyson is integrity — that the judgments that are made are made by people with really substantial expertise,” he says. “I put my name on the line. I have got a 60-year track ­record in the wine game and 50 years in the creation of content.”