Wine selection can be “tough”

Buks Nel has a Diploma Two from the Cape Wine Academy and has been judging wine for the past 25 years. He is an entomology graduate and works as the technical manager for an apple company in Elgin. 

Buks has been a judge on the Wine-of-the-Month Club panel for the last 22 years and has also judged for the Veritas Wine Awards and for the National Young Wine Show. He has also played a role in the selection of wines for the annual Nederburg Auction.

Buks’s most memorable wine judging experience was, as he puts it, “the tough choice of deciding whether a 1904 Rhine Riesling was better than a 1945”.

Outside of wine, Buks loves experimenting with new apple varieties, especially those resistant to diseases.