[プロフィール]
1962年 アメリカ合衆国オハイオ州クリーブランド市生まれ。 オハイオ州立シンシナティ大学を卒業後、シンシナティ・エレクトロニクスに勤務。
1988年 文部省主催「JETプログラム」により来日、神奈川県の公立高校で英語を教える。 後に丸紅プラズマテクニック株式会社、アシスト・テクノロジーズ社にエンジニアとして勤務。
１９９８年、日本酒を海外へ普及する活動に専念するためにアシスト・テクノロジーズ社を退社。 現在は日本酒輸出協会理事、海外への日本酒の輸出に関するコンサルティング、国内外の雑誌や新聞等への寄稿、講演活動、定期的な在日外国人のためのSAKEセミナーの開催等を行っている。
毎月メールマガジン「Sake World Newsletter」を発行。 東京で毎週末発行されるフリーマガジン「メトロポリス」に日本酒コラムを執筆。 居酒屋・レストランの英語メニューの作成や、日本各地の酒造等のホームページの英訳も行っている。 ニューヨークの「MEGU」、ラスベガスのＭＧＭグランドホテル内「SHIBUYA」の日本酒リストを作成。

著書
「Sake Handbook」、「Sake, Pure & Simple」、「Sake Companion」（英語）、「日本人も知らない日本酒の話」（小学館）、「日本酒がうまい大人の居酒屋」（戎光祥出版）

[Profile]
John Gauntner is widely recognized as the leading non-Japanese sake expert in the world. Originally hailing from Ohio, he worked in his original vocation as an electrical engineer in Japan before fate pulled him, although hardly kicking and screaming, into the sake world.

Mr. Gauntner, known as the 'Sake Guy' in Japan, is the leading non-Japanese sake expert in the world. He is well known within the sake industry as a window to the outside world for making sake popular and understood everywhere. He has written four books and hundreds of articles on sake, including a column on sake that ran eight-years in the Japan Times (Japan's most widely read English language newspaper) followed by a weekly column on sake in Japanese for Japan's (and, in fact, the world's) most widely distributed Japanese newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun. He is active on the sake lecture circuit, and teaches a series of educational sake seminars .in the Tokyo area. He is also the only non-Japanese to function as an advisor and consultant for the Japanese government on sake promotion and the worldwide sake market.

Mr. Gauntner has been quoted and/or mentioned in sake related articles in countless publications including The New York Times, Newsweek, Forbes, Business Week, and Rolling Stone. He has spoken at Harvard, Yale, and Columbia Universities, Wharton School of Business, and countless other venues across the US and Japan.

He is the only non-Japanese member of the Ginjoshu Kenkyu Kikou (Ginjo Sake Research Group), and is the only non-Japanese to have participated as an official taster in a prefectural government tasting, as well as the only non-Japanese to provide regular sake-related consulting assistance in the form of lectures to the Government of Japan. He is also the only non-Japanese to have won the "Kikizake Meijin" (Accomplished Sake Taster) award, presented by the Junsui Nihonshu Kyoukai (Pure Sake Association) for accuracy in sake tasting skills, an award he has won three times, in March of 2001, March of 2003, and again (with highest honors) in March of 2006.

John also holds monthly seminars in Tokyo in English for the expert community, or those just passing through. Each winter, he runs the Sake Professional Course, a week-long intensive sake study course in Japan, with a three-day version held yearly in the US.. Most of each winter traveling around Japan, visiting breweries regularly and constantly learning.

Other efforts at educating and edifying about sake include a free monthly sake newsletter and an extremely comprehensive and well-designed website at
www.sake-world.com.