Wine Consultant & Technical Wine Journalist

After graduating from the University of California at Riverside in 1973, Richard spent seven years teaching college level botany and plant physiology. On March 20, 1977, he bought his first winery and hours later welcomed his baby daughter to the world. Since then, he built more than ten wineries for himself and others and consulted with more than a hundred.

After several years at another winery, Richard took a position at California State University, Fresno as research enologist in the Department of Viticulture and Enology in 1985, and also started Vitis Research, a consulting company. Through this company he worked with industry vendors to create new and innovative wine equipment. He also consulted with various wineries in California.

He moved from California to Pennsylvania in 1995, starting a small winery (L. and R. Wine Company, dba Tamanend Winery). In October of 2015 both companies were sold. This allowed him to return to his roots: consulting with wineries to help them learn how to make wine or to improve their wine quality. He currently works full time as a wine consultant, primarily in PA, DE, MD, NJ, NY, and VA. As part of this consultancy, Tamanend Wine Consulting operates a wine laboratory for the analysis and review of wines for all wineries and cideries, as well as a wine production service business. 

He has also been writing technical articles about winemaking for publication in many of the wine and grape trade journals in the U.S. for more than 35 years. For more than 40 years, it has been both a pleasure and a joy for him to help other wineries across the U.S. and internationally.