Mark Shield, one of Australia's best and most well-known wine writers, wrote for Sunday Life and contributed to several other magazines. During his lifetime he also finished the first draft of his great Australian novel, Betty Boop - The Pistol Packin' Mamma, expanded his radio show on the National Evening Show with Angela Catterns, and shared a stretch limmo with Jackie Collins. He had a television program on the Foxtel lifestyle channel, but his untimely death in October 1998 cancelled the possibility of another series.

A committed wine larrikin and iconoclast, Mark Shield suspended such antics to work for charities like the Smith Family, the Fred Hollows Foundation, the Brotherhood of St Laurence and the Starlight Foundation. His parallel career as an aviation writer unfortunately never took off, having the gliding capacity of a house brick, but undaunted, he continued to collect rejection slips like most good writers. Although he managed to avoid having a cellar - "Wines are like buses should be: there's another good one along any minute, so why drink the same wine twice?" - he always found great joy in a good bottle.