{"id":12551,"date":"2012-03-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-05T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/viniportugal.leadershipbt.com\/paul-symington-decanter-man-of-the-year-2012\/"},"modified":"2012-03-05T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-03-05T00:00:00","slug":"paul-symington-decanter-man-of-the-year-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/viniportugal.leadershipbt.com\/en\/paul-symington-decanter-man-of-the-year-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Symington, Decanter Man of the Year 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Paul Symington, Decanter\u0092s Man of the Year 2012, was \u0091predestined\u0092 for his role at the helm of the family company.<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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Speaking to Andrew Jefford in this month\u2019s issue of Decanter magazine, the chairman of Symington Family Estates remembers how ‘grim’ life was for the port shippers when he was started work at the company in the mid-1970s. \u2018Now we drive nice cars and live very comfortably, but then there wasn\u2019t any money and we couldn\u2019t afford to travel. I never went to England until I was 13.\u2019 When he started work at the company in his mid-20s, he now feels he was \u2018almost predestined for this, and that my career was laid out for me. It\u2019s hard not to imagine what you might have done in another field.\u2019 Symington tells Jefford he refuses to be downcast by the current crisis in Portugal. Indulging his passion for history he went through the archives and realised that good times come and go \u2018like the seasons\u2019. \u2018Some times had been very good, but some had been really awful. We have some difficult times in Europe and Portugal now, but these things are like the seasons; it will change in time. I can\u2019t do anything about it, so I don\u2019t worry.\u2019 Described by Steven Spurrier as ‘inspirational’ and by Marchese Piero Antinori as the ‘trustworthy descendent of a great dynasty,’ Symington also makes clear that he is a European \u2013 the \u2018Europhobia\u2019 of many of the British saddens him \u2013 and that he is passionate about his homeland, the Douro, where on his retirement he will live permanently. \u2018It heals my soul. I can\u2019t wait for Janie [his wife] and I to come and live here all the time.\u2019 Symington Family Estates is run by Paul with his cousins Johnny and Rupert, and other family members of the company include his brother Dominic and his cousin Charles, with \u2018the next generation is poised to arrive soon, led by Paul\u2019s eldest son Robert\u2019, Jefford writes. As Symington is at pains to point out early in the interview, \u2018It\u2019s a family award, which I\u2019m very happy to accept \u2013 but only on behalf of everybody.\u2019<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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Paul Symington, Decanter\u0092s Man of the Year 2012, was \u0091predestined\u0092 for his role at the helm of the family company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-sem-categoria"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/viniportugal.leadershipbt.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/viniportugal.leadershipbt.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/viniportugal.leadershipbt.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/viniportugal.leadershipbt.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/viniportugal.leadershipbt.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/viniportugal.leadershipbt.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/viniportugal.leadershipbt.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/viniportugal.leadershipbt.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/viniportugal.leadershipbt.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}