the Wine Appreciators Fine wine education by fine wine people.
What do we do?
Due to the growing demand by people becoming more interested in wine and how to appreciate it, we have created an initiative to help educate the public in how to appreciate wine. The Wine Appreciators is a company that provides specialised services in various fields of wine appreciation. We present various courses in wine, we have specialised wine tastings, we give advice on what wines to buy, how to create your own personal wine cellar at home and give you an opportunity to make your own wine.
Who are we?
The company consists of two people organising and attending everything themselves: Charl Theron and Lorraine Geldenhuys.
Charl started his career in 1962 with a B.Sc. in Viticulture and Oenology at Stellenbosch University, completing his M.Sc. shortly thereafter. He has worked in the wine industry for nearly 45 years and his name has become synonymous with wine education around South Africa. For more than 10 years he was the head of production at KWV in Paarl, and started his own business pertaining to wine consultation and education in 2001. He is a well known wine judge and serves on various panels locally and internationally.
Lorraine joined forces with Charl in 2011 to establish this company that now actively helps to educate anyone interested in how to appreciate wine. She studied a BSc in Viticulture and Oenology at Stellenbosch University and finished in 2006. Like Charl, she is a qualified winemaker with an M.Sc. in Oenology. After various travels to America, Germany and living in France for a year, she also worked as winemaker in South Africa for several years. She has always been involved with wine education while being a winemaker. She has lectured at Stellenbosch University, CPUT and is now appointed as Cellar Manager at Elsenburg Agricultural College where she also teaches Wine Chemistry to the final year students.