"It doesn’t matter if the glass is half full or half empty, there is clearly room for more wine!"

The wine tasting competition winner. Claude Felbert has been judging wine for the past 35 years and has been on the Wine-of-the-Month Club judging panel since its inception. Claude earned his National Certificate in Wine Judging under the famed Professor Joel van Wyk of Stellenbosch University.

Claude has a passion for wine that runs deep in his veins. Be it tasting and judging various varietals, teaching our local market about wine, marketing and promoting South African wines in France, talking about wine to private groups or, locked away in his studio, focusing his camera on wine products.

Since 1997 Claude has run the Accolade Wine Appreciation Course and has had many highlights in his wine career, the most memorable being the winner of the Argus National Wine Taster Competition in 1975. Another memorable experience was being at a tasting at Groot Constantia of a bottle of the legendary wine of Constantia—enjoyed by Napoleon and written about by Jane Austen—that had been discovered in the cellar of the Duke of Northumberland in the UK.

Outside of wine, Claude is an expert cook and says he also lives for photography. He lectures on the subject at the Ruth Prowse School of Photography and enjoys shooting indigenous plants. He is also co-author and designer on a number of books on Clivia, his favourite flower.