Richard Mendelson

Richard Mendelson has lived and worked in Napa Valley for four decades. He fell in love with

wine as a graduate student at Oxford and moved from there to work at a prestigious winery in

Burgundy. He returned to America in 1979 to attend Stanford Law School and, after a short stint

at Wine Institute in San Francisco, moved to Napa Valley to practice wine law at the leading

Napa Valley law firm.

Richard is an internationally recognized expert on vineyard and wine law and founded and

directed the Wine Law and Policy Program at UC Berkeley. During his career, he has

represented Napa Valley’s most illustrious wineries and growers, delivering forthright, wise, and

consensus-building counsel, and has provided visionary leadership to promote and protect the

Napa Valley appellation at home and abroad.