In memoriam: Richard ‘Dick’ Bowes MW

Dick Bowes MW (legal name Richard) was born in Oporto in 1932, to a father who spent his whole career working in the port trade. After Rugby School, National Service in Cyprus and Egypt, Richard went up to Oxford, where he competed in the annual tasting match against Cambridge. In 1955 he joined W&A Gilbey Ltd – known as ‘Wine Merchants to the People’, where he was principally engaged in quality control. This – clearly – was a great way to pass the MW exam, which he did in 1966. Gilbeys merged into International Distillers & Vintners, and then Grand Metropolitan and more recently Diageo. At one point there were 14 MWs in the company. He was Chairman of the Institute in 1986, and until his retirement in 1995 Richard managed the IDV companies in Europe.

The following is an excerpt from his memoir where he speaks about his experience as a Master of Wine
Probably the most rewarding thing that happened during my working years was passing the Master of Wine exam. The exam consisted of three days of written papers on vineyard management, wine making and wine marketing , similar to the ‘finals’ exams at University (which explains why the slightly uncomfortable title of ‘Master’ was chosen), but with the unique feature that each of the three days began with a blind tasting of a dozen or so of wines. Questions were along the lines of ‘you have four white wines before you from different countries; name the country, the vine variety and the approximate price bracket of each one’ or ‘you have four red wines from different vintages from a Bordeaux Chateau; name the Chateau and name the vintages’. Starting the day with a wine tasting helped to make one’s answers in the written part more fluent! Of course one did not swallow the samples but spat them into the spittoons provided but inevitably some alcohol got into the bloodstream.

While I was working in Harlow, tasting many wines a day for quality control purposes, I decided to have a go at the exam. At that point, it had only been running for about ten years and there were fewer than 50 MWs. I passed the written part at the first go but had much more difficulty with the tasting. The pass mark was set very high – 66% – which did not leave much room for error, and I had the problem that the kind of wines which I was tasting daily were mostly down-to-earth , bottom-of-the-market stuff. Candidates got together to practise with more up-market wines but it took me (I think) four shots before I finally passed in 1966.

The greatest benefit of being an MW for me was that every two years there was a trip to one of the world’s wine-growing regions. The wine-growers went out of their way to welcome these parties of 30 or so MWs because they recognised the influence which we could have on the UK market. It is said that visits of MWs in the 1970s led to the enormous growth of Australian and New Zealand wines. I went on the trips as often as I could. To France (2), Germany, Spain (2), Portugal (2), Italy, California, Chile, Argentina, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia (2). They were good outings, with nice people and often in beautiful countryside. And of course one learned a lot. The title ‘Master’ may have been an exaggeration after just scraping through the exam but after 20 years or so one had acquired a vast amount of knowledge.

We continued to run training courses within the Company and at one time there were 14 MWs in IDV. Rather sadly, the accountants were insistent that wine would never produce the return on investment which an international corporation requires and so today, Diageo having divested itself of all its wine interests, concentrates only on marketing spirits (and Guinness).

If you have any memories you would like to share with us for Dick Bowes 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.