Hugh Johnson OBE given lifetime achievement award by db and IMW

Wine writer Hugh Johnson OBE has been named as the recipient of the 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award by the Institute of Masters of Wine and the drinks business.

Hugh Johnson

Johnson was given the award at a ceremony at Vinexpo in Bordeaux at lunchtime today where members of the wine industry gathered to honour his lifelong contribution to the trade.

The award recognises an outstanding and inspirational figure in the world of wine whose enduring contribution spans a whole career, and has previously been presented at Vinexpo Bordeaux to Robert Mondavi (2005), Marchese Piero Antinori (2007), Jean-Michel Cazes (2011) and Baroness Philippine de Rothschild (2013).

A prominent figure in the wine trade, Johnson began writing about wine in the 1960s after completing a degree in English at Cambridge University.

First writing for Vogue and House and Garden, Johnson became editor of Wine & Food and wine correspondent for The Sunday Times in 1962.

Throughout his near 60 years in the trade, Johnson has published many books on wine including The World Atlas of Wine in 1971, widely regarded as the first attempt to fully map the world’s wine regions. While Hugh Johnson’s Wine Companion, first published in 1983, has been republished in six editions.

Johnson has served as the President of The Sunday Times Wine Club since its launch in 1973 and, from 1986 to 2001, was a director of the Bordeaux first growth Château Latour. In 1990 he co-founded The Royal Tokaji Wine Company in an attempt to rebuild the Tokaji industry after Communism.

He was awarded an OBE in 2007 for “for services to wine-making and horticulture”.