Richard Mayson - The Wines of Portugal

Richard Mayson entered the wine trade as a result of living and working in Portugal, which he first visited as a child in 1971. He read Geography at the University of Sheffield where part of his degree was a study of the microclimate of Port vineyards in the Douro Valley. He joined the UK wine trade in 1984 and spent five years working for the Wine Society, the worlds oldest mail-order wine club. In 1987 he was awarded the Vintners Company Scholarship and spent three months in the vineyards of Iberia. Richard has been working as a freelance writer and lecturer since 1989. His first book, the award-winning Portugals Wines and Wine-Makers , was published in 1992. In 1998 he wrote The Story of Dows Port , published to coincide with the companys bicentenary. The first edition of Richards book Port and the Douro was published by Faber & Faber in 1999 and was shortlisted for the Andr Simon Award; the second edition, published in 2004, won the Symington Award of Excellence. Now published as part of the Infinite Ideas Classic Wine Library, it is in its fourth edition. The Wines and Vineyards of Portugal , published by Mitchell Beazley, won the Andr Simon Award for Drinks Book of the Year in 2003. In 2014 Richard was the Louis Roederer International Wine Feature Writer of the Year and in 2015 Madeira: The islands and their wines was shortlisted for the Andr Simon Award.

Richard has contributed to and consults for a number of publications, including the Oxford Companion to Wine , the Larousse Encyclopedia of Wine and the World Atlas of Wine . He writes regularly for Decanter and the World of Fine Wine and chairs the Port and Madeira panel for the Decanter World Wine Awards. Richard has also lectured to students at the Wine and Spirit Education Trust and Leiths School of Food and Wine in London.