The story of AmphoraMap starts with our founder and president. Tony’s passion for maps started when he was still a young boy. As family navigator planning family vacations to spending hours on the floor at the local library studying National Geographic maps. Once as a teenager, his father wryly observed that unlike other teenage boys Tony’s bedroom walls were covered with maps!

During his first term at university he realized he could leverage his love of maps into a profession as a geographer and cartographer – much to his parent’s dismay! Upon graduation, with degree in hand, his first job was part-time making university maps and then maps for professors for their soon-to-be published books.

Since that humble beginning Tony has enjoyed a successful 30+ year career as a cartographer in reference publishing and media industries. His prior positions include Director of Cartography/Editor-in-Chief at Hammond Map Company,
and Cartographer and Infographic Journalist at The New York Times and The Associated Press in New York City.

It was late 2007 when Tony was first introduced to wine in the town of Carmel-by-the-Sea, just south of Monterey, California. Not having come from a wine drinking family and thus not a wine drinker, you might say it was an epiphany! What followed was the beginning of a wine obsession, first devouring wine books and magazines, then formal study with the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET). Within a few years he achieved WSET’s Level 3 Advanced Certification with Merit. It was during his WSET studies when he discovered how closely linked the geography of a place – its terroir – and wine map study are to wine, that the idea of starting a wine mapping business was conceived. AmphoraMap was born soon after, fusing together his love of maps with his love of wine!