Adrian Bridge

After leaving the British Army, where he served in the 1st Queen’s Dragoon Guards and was awarded the Sword of Honour at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst, Bridge entered the investment banking field. There, he joined up with NatWest in London and quickly took charge of U.S. equity sales. Bridge left investment banking to run the Fladgate Partnership in 1994, an organization that combined Portuguese port winemaker Taylor, which already owned the port wine company Fonseca-Guimarãens, with two other port makers, Croft and Diageo. Under Bridge’s leadership, this combination of companies has produced some of the finest port wines across all its brands while simultaneously focusing on sustainability and humanitarian causes. 

Why They Made the Worthy 100: Not satisfied by running a successful wine conglomerate and founding his luxury hotel, Bridge also established the Porto Protocol. This is an international non-profit with hundreds of members seeking to mitigate global climate change. Because Bridge started it, the Porto Protocol has its roots in the wine industry, but in only a short time, its membership has spread to include the whole spectrum of the winemaking supply chain. The Protocol works as an open and global platform to allow wine industry leaders and change-makers to exchange ideas and successes and thus help bring about workable climate change solutions.