About Roy Hersh and For the Love of Port

Roy Hersh is the Founder of For the Love of Port, the internet’s leading source of information about Port, other fortified wines, and Portuguese dry wines. He publishes a quarterly newsletter full of wine reviews, travel posts, winery profiles, vintage reports, and other news and information that has become indispensable to fans of these wines. FTLOP also offers a variety of Portuguese wine tours, and its online forum has become the internet’s largest English-speaking community for Portuguese wine lovers.

Roy began his career in Food & Beverage management for more than three decades. Port wine discovered Roy in 1983. After finally visiting Portugal in 1994, he started writing articles about it and over time became a leading authority and journalist on Port and Madeira. In June 2003, Roy was one of just two Americans selected for induction into the Confraria do Vinho do Porto (Port Wine Brotherhood). To honor his oath to the Confraria, Roy quit his day job and started the FTLOP newsletter in February 2004, and by mid-2005 he had launched both the website and travel businesses.

A passionate student of wines from around the globe, Roy has served as a professional wine judge at competitions in North America and the Iberian Peninsula. He has taught classes and written hundreds of articles on Port and Madeira for FTLOP, other websites, and wine magazines such as Somm and The World of Fine Wine. Roy has also traveled extensively throughout North America promoting the wines of Portugal, presenting educational winetasting seminars to consumers, private organizations, and members of the wine trade. Roy also guides small groups on exclusive once-in-a-lifetime “insider tours” to discover authentic wine and food culture within Portugal’s wine regions, which have gained national media attention and a loyal customer following.

In 2016, Roy’s FTLOP website was inducted into the Port Wine Brotherhood, as the first “non-human entity” enshrined in the organization’s history. That same year, Hersh was also inducted into the Confraria da Vinha Madeira. Then in 2017, Roy was the first American to be promoted to the rank of Infanção by the Port Wine Confraria, making him the first individual outside of the Portuguese wine trade to become a member of both Portuguese Brotherhoods.

Roy relocated to Porto full-time in June 2022, where he has continued co-hosting tours and writing about Portuguese wines, with easy access to his favorite regions!