In memoriam: Angela Muir MW
It is with great sadness that we share the news that Angela Muir MW has passed away on 14 July 2025.
With more than 45 years in the wine trade Angela worked the first 8 years in the Wine Merchant division of John Harvey and Sons in Bristol. The following 10 years was spent overseas as buyer for Grants of St. James’s and Victoria Wine and the remaining time running her own business with husband, Peter Muir. Most of this last period was spent as a wine consultant, primarily helping producers in Europe and South America to make their wines more saleable on the export market. This involved spending around 9 months of each year outside of the UK with clients.
In 1977 Angela travelled around Europe for six months thanks to the Vintners’ Scholarship. She became a Master of Wine in 1980 and was elected a member of the Gran Orden de Caballeros de Vinos de Espana in 1988. In more recent years Angela reduced her work commitments deciding to remain with some favourite clients and friends, keeping in touch with the wine world by helping with their winemaking and helping to educate the next generations of MW students.
Memories from Masters of Wine
By Anne Krebiehl MW
I remember those Saturdays so very well when a group of us students met at a west London tube station for a shared drive down to Angela’s for a 12-wine-blind tasting. Some of these tastings were brutal, but Angela delivered her wisdom with unfailing kindness and always with a sense of humour. I loved her no-nonsense attitude, her clarity of thought and expression and her very evident love of life and wine. She gave so much of herself to us candidates; she saw the human inside us nervous and often timid students. And she catered the most wonderful lunches. A formidable woman with as big a heart as a mind. R.I.P Angela.
By Anthony Gunn MW
I met Angela when she joined the buying team at Grants of St James’s in the mid 1970’s. It was an exciting time as the wine world was fast-expanding beyond the European heartlands, and with a small team headed by Colin Anderson mw and a number of Allied Breweries companies to serve ( not only Grants but Victoria Wine and Hatch Mansfield among others ) we were kept at full stretch, with crowded passports.
Angela was hard-working, ever-enthusiastic and cheerful company to work with. She was an excellent linguist, with Spanish a particular forte. She had a heart of gold and honesty was her strongest suit : if her approach to winemakers sometimes tended towards the forthright, with diplomacy taking second place to her other, undoubted , professional skills, those who were prepared to listen were richly rewarded, as her advice was invariably sound.
I left Grants in 1980, but our paths were to cross again in later years as her consultancy business gained a growing reputation and we enlisted her services, working together (and with Liz Robertson mw, her associate) on various projects including the development of single varietals from Hungary. It was a happy collaboration.
Angela and Peter were a devoted couple, and she will have felt his loss keenly. I have lost touch in recent years, and was unaware that she had settled in Cyprus. I will miss her.
By Peter Scudamore-Smith MW
I met Angela when I was the second lonely Australian to ever attempt the exam in 1989; living periodically in London, and attending her mentored tastings on Saturdays (the venue escapes my mind); she was very instructive towards me by converting my Aussie technocrat approach with tasting into a moderate consumer-led descriptive. More impressive was her market-led thinking in European wine style development for the English drinking scene. I once questioned her about what a stylish bubbles bottle of “Flutelle” was. She replied it was intended to be a clever branding of basic Spanish sparkling with a cute descriptive, off-dry, good value and offering many supermarket shoppers an expectation of enjoyment. Her directness and kindness was everlasting.
By Sebastian Payne MW
I have vivid memories of Angela and of her selfless generosity in sharing her considerable wine-buying ability.
When I took over in 1985 as Wine Society buyer, I was shamefully ignorant of the wonderful resource of Spanish table wines and most Eastern European wines (apart from Hungary). As bulk wine buyer for Grants, one of the big five wine groups at the time, Angela had invaluable experience and was fluent in Spanish, so I asked for her help, which she freely gave.
In Spain she drove at incredible speed sometimes in the wrong direction, but we caught up in Toro, in those days a little visited backwater with little signs of life apart from the odd dog and a steaming pile of manure, but potentially a source of good full-bodied cheap red. (Last time I visited it was flourishing and the wines were excellent, but this was 1985). She roused a veteran cellar master and we tasted from a huge vat, after he had removed a feather to let a little air escape, then she tore him off a strip in fluent Spanish for being sloppy and we got results.
Later as consultant, because the retail shop , which she began with Peter in Kings Road after leaving Grants, made no money, (I have to try it, Sebastian) she and I went to Eastern Europe to find good cheap pinot Gris to ship in bulk. We found the wine full of character and fruit, but finishing and quality control were a nightmare so we abandoned the project.
But thank you Angela. Nothing daunted you. You were amazing. A true master of wine sharing your expertise with someone who had much to learn.
By Neil Tully MW
Having been fortunate to know Angela for some 35 years, as employee (the interview was scary), fellow MW (without her, I would not be one), business associate (always good to have someone older and wiser around) and family friend, I always knew it would be difficult to say goodbye.
Angela’s tenacity was legendary. Her devotion to nurturing young talent, an inspiration. Not for the faint-hearted, principled and with an appetite for hard work, Angela had a sharp wit. Having seen Angela in action in the lab, putting together a blend, her ability to compute taste, physical volumes and commercial appeal was remarkable. Driving across the Andes on one occasion with Angela was no less remarkable.
In my cellar there is a bottle of wine wrapped in newspaper. On one of her last visits to us in Somerset, Angela produced this blind tasting challenge – for later. I don’t know why I never opened it, but now I do. And I shall hear Angela’s voice while tasting – and just hope I get it right!
By Konstantinos Lazarakis MW
Angela was a pillar of the industry. She was instrumental in lifting quality standards in so many fields, from wine making to education. So, she was a pillar of the IMW as well.
By Patricia Stefanowicz MW
In our Student era, Angela was instrumental in aiding us towards the MW qualification. Badgering, Baiting, Beating (Not physically!) and Bleeding red ink on our arguments, especially for the Practical Exam Prep. A brilliant Tutor and an exemplar for anyone wishing to ‘make it’ in the wine industry. Great Lady, Angela.
If you have any memories you would like to share with us for Angela Muir MW Memoriam page or wish to pay your respects to his family please send these to myself or Luke (LStephen@mastersofwine.org) and we will make these arrangements.