New Zealand

Ina Yoon

Ina is a wine professional and educator, based in Auckland. Her experience with wine began at the age of 12 by accident, when she “stumbled upon a four-page article in [her] mother’s magazine about wine”. Despite living in “a small town in South Korea without a wine shop”, Ina’s parents encouraged her interest and allowed her to start reading wine books, as well as organising non-alcoholic wine tastings with “beverages such as milk and orange juice”. The next year, Ina and her family moved to New Zealand, and alas she “quickly learned that racism exists even in such a welcoming country”. The problems and hurdles which this brought never deterred Ina from her dream of becoming a wine professional. And yet she found that even as she entered the industry, she had to fight tooth and nail to progress. In her own words: “Despite my qualifications and experience, I had to start from scratch, moving hundreds of boxes of beer in a small wine retail shop”. Doubts would arise, but Ina stuck to her path, and then had a realisation - if succeeding in the NZ wine industry through traditional means was not an option, perhaps it was time to try succeeding through avenues less travelled. She did this on multiple fronts: founding a wine retail store specialised in the export of NZ wines to South Korea; starting a review called “The Wine Kiwi - The Contemporary New Zealand Wine Review”, which shares her “passion for New Zealand wines in multiple languages”; and offering WSET course in Korean at the New Zealand School of Wine & Spirits. Ina makes extensive use of social media to connect with her global audience, and her ultimate goal is to undertake the MW exam.