ABOUT

  • Wine writer, author, conference speaker

  • Founder: The Wine and Climate Change Institute, Oxford

  • Group Expert, The Porto Protocol, Portugal

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

Johnson-Bell has been writing about, editing, publishing, tasting and judging wine since 1993 and has been a wine lover for 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. After which, she became the Editor and then Publishing Director for International Vintage Magazine (English edition) in Paris. 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) from the University of Oxford & Oxford Brookes (OXILP), and more recently, a diploma from the Oxford Adaptation Academy, Smith School & Global Climate Adaptation Partnership. In 2023, she completed her MLitt with Distinction in Coastal and Maritime Societies and Cultures at Scotland’s University of Highlands and Islands (UHI). Dissertation title: “The South Saami Story: A Circumpolar Continuum (in the context of climate change, Green Colonisation, and the need for parliamentary self-determination)”.

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. Wooden Books published her book North European Paganism in the UK in September 2023. She is currently writing her next book, Blind Drunk. She has freelanced for dozens of magazines in France, the USA, and the 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.

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