James Cluer of Fine Vintages speaks with Mike Wreyford, Creator and Host of “ISO The Good Life” Show about wine and getting more wine knowledge thru wine certification.
James Cluer, MW began his career in the wine trade in 1988, working for an importer in Hong Kong. After attending a number of tastings he got the wine bug, and took his first WSET course at age 18.
After University in Vancouver, he headed for Bordeaux and landed an apprenticeship at Milhade et fils. He worked the vintage, picking grapes, managing the fermentations, and doing the barrel work. He started to learn about wine from the ground up.
A few years later James was still at Milhade but now in charge of global exports to 18 countries. He traveled the world meeting buyers, visiting other wineries and making contacts with key players in the wine industry. He also began seriously studying wine and in 1997 completed the WSET Diploma.
In 1998 James enrolled in the Master of Wine (MW) program. The MW is considered the pinnacle of professional qualifications in wine. Since the first MW exams in 1953, there have only been 370 successful candidates. To prepare, James began working vintages at wineries in Australia and California and touring most of the world’s wine regions. Eleven years later, he became a Master of Wine.
Fine Vintage was started in 1995. The company operates in a variety of sectors of the wine industry. We are 100% family-owned and operated with offices in Vancouver and Napa Valley.
We started with WSET wine schools in British Columbia and following the success of these expanded across Canada and the United States. We now have 10 WSET schools. In January 2012 we were awarded The Riedel trophy for WSET Educator of the Year, which is the highest honor amongst wine schools. The WSET wine courses offer professional certification to students from the most internationally recognized institute in the world.
Many of our students requested that we run wine tours and so we started with Bordeaux, as James had lived there for several years. Today we run tours to Italy, Napa, Okanagan, Spain, South Africa and other classic regions in France like Champagne and Burgundy. We work with some of the leading wine experts in those respective countries to host the tours, all of whom are Masters of Wine. Our tours have become very popular because they are so luxurious and the doors to exclusive estates are opened. They are also a lot of fun!
Our students also asked us how they could find jobs in the wine industry, and so we started a website called www.winejobsCanada.com. This has become the most popular wine recruitment website with hundreds of jobs listed. We now run recruitment websites in 15 countries with the leading sites in the USA, California, England, Hong Kong, and many others. We now have the leading network of wine job websites in the industry.
We also received many requests for us to start a wine club, so that we could select wines for our clients and have them delivered to their door. We now operate in Canada and the United States and pride ourselves on our independence and ability to find undiscovered gems at great prices. We’ve been honored to wine several major awards from Wine Spectator and Business Traveller magazine for our wine selections for major coporations.
Over the years we’ve been contracted by a host of different corporations to perform consultancy services. We’ve been honored to have won contracts with two Canadian governments, Fairmont Hotels, Marriott Hotels and Resorts in Thailand, Qatar Airways in the Middle East, Crystal Cruises, AMA Waterways, Chateau Montelena and Trefethen in Napa, major retailers and various others. Our services focus on consultant wine buying, training, public speaking and strategic planning. We also run two wineries in Canada as General Manager.
Our company has also been fortunate to be contacted by magazines and newspapers to write articles, like BC’s major daily The Vancouver Sun. James has judged at the Decanter World Wine Awards, is an Associate Director of the University of BC’s Wine Research Department and has been inducted into prestigious associations like the Commanderie de Bordeaux. He has trained with a professional “nose” from the perfume industry and his peers consider him one of the leading tasters in the world, known as “the nose of wine”. We also produce videos on the classic wineries of the world and write a blog.
Sondra and James Cluer spend their days running their company and taking care of their 2 children. Other than enjoying a glass of wine, our hobbies include horse-riding, skiing, running, and going on crazy adventures to the world’s highest peaks.
Our mission, as they say, is to provide the best customer service we possibly can. Just like in wine, quality never goes out of style. Thank you for considering our company.
James Cluer MW
