Sam Caporn has worked in wine for her entire professional life and during that time has written about wine and travelled the world extensively, buying and blending wines for the UK market. In 2011 she became a Master of Wine (MW), having passed the notoriously difficult theory and practical papers and was also awarded the prestigious Madame Bollinger Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the Practical Paper; blind tasting 36 wines over three days and being able to deduce what is in the glass from smell and taste alone. There are currently 414 MWs worldwide, of which 149 are women - more people have gone into space than have achieved this qualification.

In the same year (2011), she set up her own wine consultancy business, The Mistress of Wine and consults to one of the country's leading discount retailers, is a regular guest judge for Which? magazine, is a Co-Chair of the global wine competition The International Wine Challenge and hosts popular corporate wine tastings and B2C events. She has also appeared as the wine expert on Saturday Kitchen and This Morning.

Her real passion however is educating consumers about wine and sharing her knowledge and expertise to enable wine lovers to understand what they like and why. When she isn't sniffing, swirling and spitting wine, she can be found drinking it for enjoyment, reading a great book or hanging out with her husband, son and very fat cat.

Photography credit: Candice Lake