Stephan Reinhardt researched and taught as a theater scholar at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich until shortly after the turn of the millennium. As a theater and music critic for the Süddeutsche Zeitung (one of the largest daily newspapers in Germany), he switched to wine in the fall of 2000 and has written exclusively about wine ever since. Initially, he continued to write for the Süddeutsche, then for the Welt am Sonntag and the daily newspaper "taz." Stephan has also written for numerous magazines in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, including Der Feinschmecker, Falstaff, Fine and GQ. In April 2014, Robert M. Parker Jr. invited Stephan to join The Wine Advocate team. Here Stephan writes about wines from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Alsace but initially also covered the Loire and Champagne. Stephan is also a wine columnist for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
His book The Finest Wines of Germany was published in 2012 and was shortlisted as the "Best International Wine Book of the Year." Together with Stuart Pigott and others, he published Wein spricht deutsch in 2007, a large-format 700-page work in German on the best wines and winemakers from German-speaking countries.
Stephan has lived near Hamburg in northern Germany for over 20 years.