Richard Mayson entered the wine trade as a result of living and working in Portugal, which
he first visited as a child in 1970. 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 entered the UK wine trade in 1984 and spent five years working for the Wine Society,
the world’s oldest mail-order wine club. In 1987 he was awarded the Vintners’ Company
Scholarship and spent three months in the vineyards of Iberia. Now based in the north of
England, Richard has been working as a freelance wine writer and lecturer since 1989. His
first book, the award-winning Portugal’s Wines and Wine-Makers, was published in 1992,
followed by a second edition in 1998. He also wrote The Story of Dow’s Port, published to
coincide with the company’s bicentenary in 1998. The first edition of this book, published
in 1999, was shortlisted for the André Simon Award and the second edition, published in
2004, won the Symington Award of Excellence. Richard’s book The Wines and Vineyards of
Portugal, published by Mitchell Beazley, won the André Simon Award for the Drinks Book
of the Year in 2003.
Richard has contributed to a number of publications, including the Oxford Companion to
Wine and the Larousse Encyclopaedia of Wine. He writes regularly for Decanter and the World
of Fine Wine, and lectures to students at the Wine and Spirit Education Trust and Leith’s
School of Food and Wine in London. Richard currently divides his time between his home
and business interests in the Derbyshire Peak District and the Alentejo in Portugal where he
owns a vineyard. In 1999 he became a Cavaleiro of the Confraria do Vinho do Porto.
Leo Duff was born in Belfast and studied Illustration at Brighton College of Art and the
Royal College of Art in London. Over the past fifteen years she has combined commissions
with her personal practice to create work for five exhibitions based on Northern Portugal
and its unique and distinctive land- and cityscape. Her speciality is in creating a sense of
place, and clients have included Sainsbury, American Express, Elle, Vogue, Penguin Books,
BP Oil, The Times, Nord Deutsches Landesbank and Saatchi & Saatchi. She also illustrated
The Wines and Vineyards of Portugal, published by Mitchell Beazley. Leo Duff is currently
Course Director of MA Drawing as Process at Kingston University, Surrey, England.