SJ COLLABORATORS
Livia Alyson Careaga
[no link because she likes to remain mysterious]
Producer, marketing strategist, sounding board and invaluable idea-generator for SteepleJack, she is the person who can understand a person’s dreams and turn them into reality. A longtime friend who has the deepest and widest set of relationships with Italian wine producers of anyone I know, she is also mom to Italo, the feisty Jack Russell who occasionally features in SJ stories
Jordan Mackay
Wine & food writer extraordinaire and genius nickname-giver who decided mine was SteepleJack. Here is Jordan’s dramatic rationale for the nickname.
Read Jordan’s rationale
In days of yore, the steeplejack was a village’s solitary guardian of the heights, scaling church spires to tend the bells and weathervanes that watched over entire communities, working alone where others feared to climb. Likewise, Stephanie “SteepleJack” Johnson ascends where others dither: tall and lean as the steeples themselves, she ventures brashly into the world of wine, casting her gaze from rarefied altitudes. Uncompromising and incorruptible, she works alone, her insights ringing clear across the valleys of our understanding—each bottle uncovered, every vintage chronicled, another call to climb higher, look farther, and taste what awaits the bold at wine’s sacred peaks.—Jordan Mackay
Maki Yamaguchi
Gifted Brooklyn-based artist who created the SteepleJack image, SJ monogram and portrait
Erika Grattapaglia
Talented designer for the Argo Business Solutions team who created the look and structure of this website
Wine & Spirits Magazine
Many thanks to Joshua Greene, Tara Q Thomas and the ever-evolving team at W&S Magazine for starting me on my professional journey into the beautiful world of Italian wine. The US wine community continues to feel the loss of this influential and principled publication.