Sir Guy Fison RIP

Kyt · Oct 29, 2008

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article5041100.ece

The first chairman of the Institute of Masters of Wine, Sir Guy Fison played a leading role in shaping the way we drink today though the work he did in the industry’s various commissions. He also had a distinguished war record as a naval officer who adapted radar to lethal effect.

Richard Guy Fison was born in Bangor, North Wales in January 1917. He was the eldest son of the wool merchant Sir Guy Fison, 3rd Baronet, and his wife Gwladys, née Davies. His mother hailed from an immensely rich ship-owning family. Fison succeeded his father in 1964.

The baronetcy had originally been conferred on Fison’s great-great uncle, a millowner from Burley in Wharfedale in the West Riding, who was Tory MP for Doncaster from 1895 until the landslide Liberal victory in the general election of 1906.

Fison was given a traditional education at Eton, where he excelled at sports: skating and skiing in the Alps as well as piloting his yacht in the Menai Strait. In 1936 he followed in his father’s footsteps and went up to New College, Oxford, where he read modern history and was a member of the Bullingdon Society.

Fison was travelling in the United States when war broke out. As soon as he could make it home he joined the RNVR. Initially he was put to work on Channel convoys in a motor launch before carrying out similar work in the Irish Sea. He rose to the rank of lieutenant commanding the motor torpedo boats Hornet and Dartmouth. In 1942 his vessel was sunk by enemy fire off Cap Barfleur, but Fison was rescued by another torpedo boat.

From 1943 Fison was with the Radar Control Unit at Kingswear and equipped all motor torpedo and gun boats with RAF 10cm radar. These possessed a 35-five mile range. After these successful trials, radar was installed in Captain Class frigates, resulting in huge enemy losses.

On November 14, 1944, together with Philip Lee and Guy Hudson, he was awarded the DSC for gallantry in the course of the German evacuation of Le Havre. When the war ended in August 1945, Fison was radar officer serving on the cruiser Superb.

He was demobbed at Christmas 1945. After war service he considered a career in diplomacy, but failed the Foreign Office preliminary exam. In 1947 he made a study trip to look at winemaking in Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Jerez and Oporto before entering the wine trade with Saccone & Speed. He became a buyer for Saccone & Speed in 1950. In those days the company had close contacts with the Royal Navy through its branches in various naval ports in Britain and abroad. In 1952 he was made director of buying and in 1954 passed the wine trade’s new Master of Wine qualification. Those were the days before the marketing of the MW exam, which had more to do with professional qualification than the gustatory gymnastics that it suggests to many people today. From 1956 to 1958 he served as chairman to the newly created Institute of Masters of Wine.

Saccone & Speed merged with Charles Kinloch, the wine side of the Courage Brewery in 1962. He rose to become chairman of Saccone & Speed in 1979. He stood down at the age of 65 in 1982 and for another year worked for Percy Fox. In the 1970s he was chairman of the Geographical Appellations Committee, which brought Britain into line with labelling law within the Common Market.

From 1976 to 1977 he was President of the Wine and Spirit Association of Great Britain. From 1982 to 1983 he served as chairman of the Wine Development Board where he instituted a new classification of wines by sweetness as well as fresh regulations about the sales of wine by the glass. In 1983 he was director of the Wine Standards Board. His career in the wine trade was crowned when he was appointed Master of the Vintners’ Company in the City of London from 1983 to 1984.

In 1986 he founded a new company called Fine Vintage Wines, based in Oxford, and ran it until 1997. He took a particular interest in wines from Bordeaux and Alsace.

He was a keen collector and sold off a collection of works of art in 1973 that included some fine French Masters. He lived in Barnes in southwest London while his children were young, later moving first to Chobham in Surrey then Long Sutton in Hampshire — where he spent ten years as a churchwarden. After the death of his wife he lived in Odiham in Hampshire.

In 1997 he converted to Roman Catholicism. He enjoyed fishing, playing golf and cultivating his garden. He married Elyn Doria Hartmann from Bordeaux in 1952. She was the daughter of Poul Mogens Hartmann, who ran the still extant Norwegian wine and cognac firm of Birkedal Hartmann based in the Gascon capital. The match was arranged during a salmon fishing excursion to northern Norway. She predeceased him in 1987.

His is survived by his son Charles William, who succeeds him, and a daughter: Isabelle Frances. At the end of his life he was too frail to look after himself, and lived in an old people’s home in Tite Street in Chelsea in West London.

Sir Guy Fison, 4th Bt, DSC, master of wine, was born on January 9, 1917. He died on October 1, 2008, aged 91
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Antipodean Andy · Oct 29, 2008

There's a life involving a lot of passion. RIP.

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Sir Guy Fison RIP

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