Arthur Ray Beckwith

Ray Beckwith was born in Cowell, South Australia, the eldest son of ironmonger Arthur Henry Beckwith (1883–1947) and his wife Blanche Beckwith (1881–1941), née Brown.

He grew up in Murray Bridge and was educated at Murray Bridge Hight School. He proceeded to Roseworthy Agricultural College, where he was dux in his second year and completed his Honours Diploma of Agriculture in 1932.

In 1933 he won a cadetship, one of five such paid positions, to operate a model winery at Roseworthy, under Alan R. Hickinbotham (1898–1959) and John L. Williams' (died 1962). His first research project was to investigate the use of pure cultured yeasts rather than those which occur naturally on the skins of the grapes, and soon proved the superiority of cultured yeasts.

From there he was headhunted by Colin Haselgrove of Thomas Hardy Wines as an assistant to winemaker Roger Warren, making sparkling wines at Mile End and then poached by Leslie Penfold Hyland, manager of Penfolds Wines in Nuriootpa, as assistant to Alfred Scholz, commencing on 2 January 1935. His first major project was construction of a laboratory dedicated to yeast research and a large vessel for yeast cultivation. The strain he settled on was one from Portugal, designated A1. He was able to prove that avoiding over-temperature during fermentation was a major factor in reducing bacterial spoilage.

In 1936 Beckwith undertook some research at the laboratory of Alexander Killen Macbeth, Angas Professor of Chemistry at the University of Adelaide, looking into the effects of acidity on wines. In spite of the Great Depression, Macbeth had been able to purchase from England a Cambridge electronic pH meter, a recent and very expensive innovation which allowed speedy and accurate measurements of this parameter. His researches led to the finding that controlling acidity could limit bacterial growth in wines and reduce spoilage to practically zero. Until this discovery, much wine production was so spoiled that it was fit only for distillation. Manipulation of wine pH with tartaric acid, a natural component of wine, is now part of the winemaker's arsenal. His work so impressed Leslie Penfold Hyland that his request for a similar pH meter was approved without question.

Beckwith married in late 1936 and settled down to live in Nuriootpa. 

Beckwith retired in 1973.