The 49-year-old American-born, Hong Kong-based former accountant is one of only 253 people around the world qualified as a master of wine.

In Melbourne to judge the 2008 Royal Melbourne Wine Show at the showgrounds, she said that even when "off-duty" and facing "a wine extravaganza", she opts to savour the taste of each wine served rather than risk a concentration on the first bottles, sabotaging her taste buds.

Although raised in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, which is close to the Russian River Valley wine region and famed for its pinot noir, she then had no inkling what a bordeaux or a burgundy was.

Trained as an accountant and fluent in four languages —German, French, Spanish, and Japanese — she left America looking for adventure and landed a job in Hong Kong. Bereft of familiar Californian wines, she fell back on beer, until curiosity led her to enrol in some wine courses. In a case of "a hobby gone wild", she became a professor of wine for four years at New York's Rochester Institute of Technology before undertaking the master of wine exams in London.

The "tough" four-day theory exam tested her knowledge of viticulture, winemaking, the international business of wine and issues such as global warming and wine and health.

Students were given 12 glasses of "anonymous" wines. They were allowed 10 minutes a glass to taste, identify where the wine was from, how it was made, what varieties were used, its ageing potential and its market possibilities. She also had to complete a dissertation on wine, making her the first master of wine in Asia.

At home in Hong Kong, she and her husband have a 5000-bottle collection. Her favourite Australian wines are semillons "because no one does them quite like the Australians", rieslings and cabernets.

The wine show panel is tasting its way through 3300 wines from 518 wineries for 21 awards, including the Premiers Gold Trophy, for the best Victorian wine.