On 20 August 2026, the Institute of Masters of Wine (IMW), the London-based body that has certified the wine trade's most demanding qualification since 1955, announced its newest class: seven professionals who had completed all stages of the Master of Wine (MW) exam. Among them was Tiago Macena, a Portuguese oenologist rooted in the Dão and the Azores, who became the first person from Portugal ever to earn the title.
Tiago Macena
It is a small number with a large meaning. The IMW's global community numbers just over 400 members, and this year's class, the largest since 2021, marked the first time Portugal and Hungary have been represented in it at all. We spoke with Tiago Macena about the decade it took to get there, the grape variety at the centre of his research, and what he thinks his own country still needs to do to be understood on the world wine stage.
Quick facts
Tiago Macena grew up around vineyards without planning a career in wine. "I grew up surrounded by vineyards because both my grandparents had vines, but at the time I didn't imagine that I would make a career out of wine," he says. What he did know early on was that a conventional office job was never going to suit him.
That instinct led him to Lisbon to study Agronomic Engineering, specialising in viticulture and oenology. "I discovered that wine was something that came naturally to me," he says. "I studied it because I genuinely enjoyed it." University tastings with friends, wine fairs and visits to producers gradually turned a subject of study into a vocation.
The idea of the Master of Wine qualification arrived almost by accident. Around 2008 or 2009, while working as an oenologist in the Dão, Macena sat in on a tasting with two foreign clients who happened to be MWs. Watching them identify the oak treatment and winemaking style of a white wine with what he calls unsettling accuracy, he remembers thinking: "It seems as if they were there making the wine with us." He went home, looked up what a Master of Wine actually was, and the title stayed with him for years before he acted on it.
Macena entered the MW programme in 2012. Of the 25 candidates at the entrance masterclass held in Portugal, 24 sat the entrance exam; only nine passed, Macena among them. "Suddenly the idea that had been somewhere in the back of my mind became a real possibility," he says. "But I was also quite naïve about what it would take." The difficulty, he explains, was never only about accumulating knowledge. It was about balancing study, a demanding professional life and family. At one point he judged himself not ready and stepped away from the programme to focus on work. He returned in 2017, restarting the first year with, in his words, far better preparation.
Even then, the path was not linear. He describes 2021 as a year in which he performed worse than he had in 2019, a setback that came after considerable preparation. The turning point, he says, was changing his approach: travelling more, tasting with a wider circle of people, and studying alongside a group of Spanish candidates to better understand what the Institute was actually testing for.
The single hardest part, in his account, was the blind tasting component. "You have to identify wines from anywhere in the world, but identifying them is only part of the exercise," he says. "You have to explain the reasoning behind your conclusions." The exam, he adds, is designed to reward generalists rather than specialists: someone who understands wine broadly, not only Burgundy, Bordeaux or Riesling. In the end, he credits both years of hard work and a measure of luck, adding a line that sums up his view of the whole process: "luck also takes a lot of work."
For Macena, the qualification changes his platform more than his day job. "I'm still an oenologist, consultant and producer," he says, but he wants the visibility that comes with the MW letters after his name to help explain Portuguese wine internationally.
Asked what makes Portuguese wine distinctive, his answer is immediate: diversity. Portugal has more than 250 indigenous grape varieties, spread across regions with markedly different soils, climates and altitudes, all inside a relatively small country. The same diversity that makes the country fascinating, he argues, is also what makes it hard to communicate abroad. Only a small share of those 250 varieties have achieved real international recognition, which he sees less as a weakness than an opportunity, provided the industry invests in research, consistent quality and clearer communication about what makes each grape distinctive.
The reaction from within Portugal's wine institutions has echoed that framing. Frederico Falcão, president of ViniPortugal, the national wine promotion body, publicly welcomed the news, noting that having a Portuguese Master of Wine gives the country's wine sector a stronger, more direct voice in international circles.
Tiago Macena's final MW research paper, a required element of the programme, centred on Encruzado and its relationship with the Dão. He describes the grape as combining freshness, structure, balance and real ageing potential, but says what fascinates him is less the variety in isolation than its dialogue with the region: granite soils, altitude and forest cover all shape the wines that come out of it. "This is what makes wine so interesting," he says. "It is not simply about a grape variety or a technique. It is about the relationship between people, place and time." His own Dão wine, Código, is a direct expression of that idea.
Macena also works as an oenologist in the Azores, a project that he says has sharpened rather than complicated his thinking about terroir. Where the Dão offers altitude, granite and forest, the Azores bring wind, humidity, volcanic soil and constant proximity to the Atlantic. Working across both, he says, has reinforced his conviction that a technically flawless wine is not necessarily an interesting one: "I want a wine to tell me something about where it comes from." Tarelo, his wine from the Azores, is the practical result of that philosophy.
Macena is direct about the role wine tourism can play in helping international visitors understand Portuguese wine: a large one. Tasting a wine at the place it was made, alongside the local food and landscape, does work that a bottle on a shelf abroad cannot. He points to Portugal's combination of diverse wine regions, striking landscapes, gastronomy and history as the raw material for an exceptional wine tourism offer, and mentions his own involvement in events such as the Wine Battle and the launch of ExperienceA in Melides as examples of experiences built around that idea. For him, a good wine experience succeeds when it creates an emotional connection between the wine, the people, the place and the story behind it, not simply a tasting note.
Asked how he would introduce Portugal to someone who knows nothing about its wine, Macena said he would resist the temptation to explain all 250 grape varieties or list every region. Instead, he would pour a glass and let the wine lead the conversation. Asked for a starting point, he named a short, concrete list:
His own wines, Código from the Dão and Tarelo from the Azores, sit naturally within that same starting list.
Código Wines
Asked to name the single biggest obstacle facing Portuguese wine internationally- quality, distribution, recognition, or communication- Macena rules out the first. "We have exceptional wines and highly talented producers," he says. The real challenge, in his view, is recognition and communication, compounded by distribution: consumers simply find it easier to recognise regions and grape varieties from countries that have been marketing them for decades.
That does not mean Portugal should try to imitate them. "We should compete by being Portugal," he says, pointing to the country's indigenous varieties, Atlantic influence, old vineyards and history as genuine assets rather than obstacles to smooth over. The goal, as he puts it, is to make Portugal easier to understand internationally without making it less Portuguese.
For Macena, the Master of Wine title marks a beginning rather than an end. He plans to keep working with producers and regions across Portugal, but sees the qualification as a tool for building bridges between Portuguese wine and the international wine community. Success, he says, would look less like personal recognition and more like a Portuguese producer, region or grape variety gaining real traction abroad because of it.
That ambition already carries institutional weight. ViniPortugal has followed his MW journey for years precisely because of what it could mean for how Portuguese wine is perceived internationally, a signal that his achievement is being read, inside Portugal at least, as more than a personal milestone.
Asked, finally, what he hopes the world will be saying about Portuguese wine in ten years, Macena keeps his answer close to how he opened the conversation: with curiosity rather than a list, one glass at a time, until the person holding it thinks, in his words, "I want to discover more about Portugal."