Sir Guy Fison, 91, first chairman of Institute of Masters of Wine played leading role in shaping the way we drink today
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article5041100.ece
Sir Guy Fison, Bt: Wartime radar specialist and wine importer
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Sir Guy Fison
Fison: established guidelines that brought Britain into line with
continental European appellation labelling law
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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