The Institute of Masters of Wine has just announced that a further two MW candidates who passed the notoriously stiff exams have had their dissertations officially approved and so may now called themselves Masters of Wine.

Ned Goodwin MW (below) may be familiar to other Purple pagers from our Members' forum.  A 41-year-old Australian, he has lived and worked in Japan for over a decade, and is currently based in Tokyo.  He is fluent in Japanese, and works closely with sommeliers and restaurants in Japan. 

Rhys Pender MW, 35, is also Australian, as you may discern from the picture above, and now lives in the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia, western Canada. He runs his own education and consultancy business.

Like any MW who was lucky enough to pass the exams when they and the world of wine were so much simpler, and like anyone who has been following Richard Hemming's diary of an MW student, I am well aware just how much work Ned and Rhys must have undertaken - especially since they are located in places where fellow MW students to taste and learn with must have been thin on the ground.  

Many, many congratulations to them both.  They bring the total number of Masters of Wine in the world to 281, resident in 23 different countries.