49 Wine merchants

A winemaker or vintner is a person engaged in winemaking. They are generally employed by wineries or wine companies, where their work includes:Cooperating with viticulturists Monitoring the maturity of grapes to ensure their quality and to determine the correct time for harvest Crushing and pressing grapes Monitoring the settling of juice and the fermentation of grape material Filtering the wine to remove remaining solids Testing the quality of wine by tasting Placing filtered wine in casks or tanks for storage and maturation Preparing plans for bottling wine once it has matured Making sure that quality is maintained when the wine is bottled

William Abell was an English vintner who became master of the Vintners' Company. As a politician he was an alderman and later sheriff of London. He is associated with a controversy over the manner and terms on which a monopoly in the area of wine retailing was granted to members of the Vintners' Company.

Sir Alexander Bannerman was a Scottish merchant, vintner, politician and British colonial governor.

Ezio Barbieri was an Italian criminal.

Jacques-Gabriel Bulliot was a French historian and wine merchant, and a member of the Eduenne Society of Arts, Sciences and Arts, founded in Autun in 1836. He discovered the site of Bibracte he located at Mont Beuvray (Saône-et-Loire).

James Busby was appointed in 1833 as the British Resident in New Zealand, and became involved in drafting both the 1835 Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand and the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. As British Resident, he acted as New Zealand's first jurist and the "originator of law in Aotearoa", to whom New Zealand owes almost all of its underlying jurisprudence'. Busby is also regarded as the "father" of the Australian wine industry, as he brought the first collection of vine stock from Spain and France to Australia.

Frank Hedges Butler was a British wine merchant, and a founding member of the Aero Club of Great Britain.

Camille Ournac was a wine merchant, miller and French politician. In his political life he was member of the Departmental council, socialist mayor of Toulouse where he initiated several reforms and improvements to the city. He later became senator for Haute-Garonne in the Third French Republic.

Walter Channing Jr. was a wood sculptor, winemaker, and venture capitalist. He owned the Channing Daughters Winery in Bridgehampton, New York, where he planted his first Chardonnay vines in 1982.

Claude Cholat was a French painter. He created the painting La Prise de la Bastille after the storming of the Bastille in 1789. During the storming, he operated a cannon and fought for the National Guard.

Gary Conway is an American actor and screenwriter. His notable credits include a co-starring role with Gene Barry in the detective series, Burke's Law, from 1963–1965. In addition, he starred in the Irwin Allen sci-fi series Land of the Giants from 1968–1970.

George Alfred Davies was an Australian-born Mayor of his native Fremantle. He was a founding director of the Fremantle Building Society and a Justice of the Peace. He built the Oddfellows Hotel in Fremantle, which became the heritage listed Norfolk Hotel.

Gérard Xavier Marcel Depardieu, CQ is a French actor. He has received acclaim for his performances in The Last Metro (1980), for which he won the César Award for Best Actor, in Police (1985), for which he won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor, Jean de Florette (1986), and Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), for which he won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival and his second César Award for Best Actor as well as garnering a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. He co-starred in Peter Weir's comedy Green Card (1991), winning a Golden Globe Award, and later acted in many big budget Hollywood movies including Ridley Scott's 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996), Randall Wallace's The Man in the Iron Mask (1998), and Ang Lee's Life of Pi (2012). He is a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur and Chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite. He was granted citizenship of Russia in January 2013, and became a cultural ambassador of Montenegro during the same month.

Duncan Dunbar was a Scottish brewer and wine merchant.

Dawnine Sample Dyer is an American winemaker and entrepreneur who pioneered the use of champagne-making methods in California's fledgling sparkling wine industry in the 1970s.

Leonard Kimball Firestone was an American businessman, diplomat, and philanthropist.

John Alexander Fladgate, was a port wine merchant. Fladgate was the son of Francis Fladgate, an Essex Street solicitor, friend of William Jerdan, who employed John Hamilton Reynolds from 1818 to 1820, and Maria Anne Bassett. He was christened in the church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields on 21 December 1809.

Michael John Kells Fleetwood is a British musician. He is best known as the drummer, co-founder, and leader of the rock band Fleetwood Mac. Fleetwood, whose surname was merged with that of the group's bassist John "Mac" McVie to form the name of the band, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Fleetwood Mac in 1998.

Ernest J. Gallo was an American businessman and philanthropist. Gallo co-founded the E & J Gallo Winery in Modesto, California.

Rowan Gormley is a South African born entrepreneur. He was appointed Group CEO of Majestic Wine PLC after the acquisition of Naked Wines in April 2015.

Richard Graff (1937–1998) was a Californian winemaker.

Jean "Johnny" Frederic Hugel was an Alsatian wine producer, described by wine expert Tom Stevenson as "the single most important person in the development of Alsace wine industry throughout the 20th century."

Hermann Jaeger was a Swiss-American viticulturist, honored as a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor for his part in saving the French wine industry from the phylloxera root louse pest.

Jean-Paul Jauffret is a French businessman, politician and tennis player.

Justerini & Brooks is a fine wine and spirits merchants founded in St. James's in 1749, originally to provide wine and spirits to the aristocratic households of London. The firm has been a supplier to every British monarch since the coronation of King George III in 1761.

Maynard James Keenan is an American musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, actor, and winemaker. He is best known as the singer and primary lyricist of the rock band Tool, with whom he has released five studio albums, A Perfect Circle, with whom he has released four studio albums, and Puscifer, with whom he has released four studio albums.

Marek Tadeusz Kondrat is a former Polish TV, film and theatrical actor, director.

Corinne Mentzelopoulos-Petit is a French-Greek businesswoman who owns and runs the prestigious Bordeaux wine estate, Château Margaux. Her wines have often won Bordeaux's Wine of the Vintage. She has been cited as one of the leading women in the wine industry.

Diane Marie Disney-Miller was the only biological child of Walt Disney and his wife Lillian Bounds Disney. Diane co-founded the Walt Disney Family Museum alongside her family. She was president of the Board of Directors of the Walt Disney Family Foundation. The museum, which opened in 2009, was established to promote and inspire creativity and innovation and celebrate and study the life of Walt Disney.

Robert Gerald Mondavi was an American winemaker. His technical and marketing strategies brought worldwide recognition for the wines of the Napa Valley in California. From an early period, Mondavi promoted labeling wines varietally rather than generically, which became the standard for New World wines. The Robert Mondavi Institute (RMI) for Wine and Food Science at the University of California, Davis opened in October 2008 in his honor.

Nicolas-Alexandre, marquis de Ségur (1695–1755) was a Bordeaux wine maker who during his lifetime was known as the "Prince of Vines" due to his ownership of some of the most famous Bordeaux chateaus-including Château Lafite, Château Latour, Château Mouton and Château Calon-Ségur. A hundred years after his death, the Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855 would designate Lafite and Latour as First Growths, Mouton as a second growth and Calon-Ségur as a third growth.

Harold Olmo was an American viticulturist and professor at the University of California, Davis where he created many new grape varieties known today as Olmo grapes. In the 1950s, he helped to establish California's first quarantine facility on the UC Davis campus to permit California growers to import foreign vines. This led to an expansion of California's wine industry as more Vitis vinifera was introduced to the area.

Dom Pierre Pérignon, O.S.B., was a French Benedictine monk who made important contributions to the production and quality of Champagne wine in an era when the region's wines were predominantly still red. Popular myths frequently, but erroneously, credit him with the invention of sparkling Champagne, which did not become the dominant style of Champagne until the mid-19th century.

Michael Polenske is an American entrepreneur, gallery owner, and vintner. He is the founder of the Bespoke Collection and Blackbird Vineyards. He serves as creative director, chairman and founder of the Bespoke Collection. Polenske has been profiled in Forbes, the San Francisco Chronicle, Food & Wine, the Robb Report, Town & Country and Departures.

Bernardus Marinus "Ben" Pon was a Dutch vintner and Olympian and motor racing driver. He competed in one Formula One race, the 1962 Dutch Grand Prix, but had a far longer career in sports car racing, before turning his back on the track to concentrate on the wine trade. He also represented the Netherlands in clay pigeon shooting at the 1972 Summer Olympics, finishing 31st in the skeet event.

The Rhone Rangers are a group of American winemakers who promote the use of grape varieties from the Rhône Valley. They are mostly based on the West Coast, particularly California, and have created a not-for-profit organization for the promotion of wines containing at least 75% of the 22 Rhône grape varieties. The name is a pun on The Lone Ranger, and was coined by Wine Spectator to describe Randall Grahm for their 1989 April 15 issue, which featured Grahm dressed as the Lone Ranger under the title "The Rhône Ranger" (singular). The name was subsequently used for other winemakers.

Don Pedro Sainsevain was a French-born Californian vintner, ranchero, and a signer of the Californian Constitution in 1849. He is best known for his role in Californian winemaking, as one of the first producers of sparkling wine in California. He also was an early participant in the California Gold Rush.

Tareq Dirgham Salahi is an American vintner, winery owner, travel/tourism expert, and television personality. Salahi has appeared in two reality-television shows: Where the Elite Meet, and NBC Universal/Bravo's The Real Housewives of D.C. In November 2009, he became known for attending a White House state dinner as an uninvited guest.

Savanna Samson is the stage name of Natalie Oliveros, an American former pornographic actress. The winner of several AVN Awards, she has spent most of her career as a contract performer with major producer Vivid Entertainment, and is known for her roles in acclaimed adult films such as The New Devil in Miss Jones. In addition to performing, she has her own adult film studio, Savanna Samson Productions. A native of upstate New York, she entered the adult film industry in 2000, after working as a dancer at the Manhattan strip club, Scores.

William Royce "Boz" Scaggs is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He became prominent for his series of albums in the late 1970s, and songs "Lido Shuffle" and "Lowdown" from Silk Degrees (1976), which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. Scaggs continues to write, record music, and tour.

Domènec Soberano i Mestres was a Catalan wine merchant who was also an amateur painter and art teacher.

Steven Spurrier was a British wine expert and merchant who was described as a champion of French wine. Spurrier organised the Paris Wine Tasting of 1976, which unexpectedly elevated the status of California wine and promoted the expansion of wine production in the New World. He was the founder of the Academie du Vin and Christie's Wine Course, in addition to authoring and co-authoring several wine books.

Taittinger is a French wine family who are famous producers of Champagne. The estate is headed by Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger, a member of the consultative committee of the Banque de France. Its diversified holdings included Champagne Taittinger, Société du Louvre and Concorde Hotels, whose flagship is the famed Hotel de Crillon on the Place de la Concorde in Paris, France as well as the Loire Valley wine-producing firm of Bouvet-Ladubay, and a partnership in Domaine Carneros in California, until it was sold to Starwood Capital in 2005.

Pierre-Charles Taittinger was the founder of the Taittinger champagne house and chairman of the municipal council of Paris in 1943–1944 during the German occupation of France, in which position he played a role during the Liberation of Paris.

Tanners Wines Ltd is a family-owned independent wine merchants company based in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England.

József Törley is credited as having established one of the most successful brands of sparkling wine outside of the Champagne region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

William Charles Winshaw, was an American physician who created Stellenbosch Farmer's Winery (SFW) in South Africa in 1935. He was born in Kentucky, USA on 21 November 1871 and died in South Africa on 11 March 1968. He also co-owned the Oude Libertas vineyard there and produced Lieberstein, a dry white wine. He was married to Ada Charlotte (Day) and Susan Valerie

William Wolfskill (1798–1866) was an American-Mexican pioneer, cowboy, and agronomist in Los Angeles, California beginning in the 1830s. He had earned money for land in a decade as a fur trapper near Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he had become a Mexican citizen. This enabled him to own land in California.

Victoriano Gregorio de Ysasi Jáuregui was a Spanish wine merchant and philatelist resident in London. He was an early member of the Philatelic Society, London, later the Royal Philatelic Society London. Shortly before his death, major parts of his collection of the stamps of Spain and its colonies were acquired by Thomas Tapling. He died from injuries received in a railway accident at Blackburn while waiting in a carriage at a railway station when a connecting train failed to stop in time.