Food24’s Cathy Marston crowned top wine educator

Cathy Marston from South Africa’s International Wine Education Centre (IWEC) has been named Wine & Spirit Education Trust’s International Educator of the Year. The WSET Educator of the Year award is the highest honour available in the world of wine education and is highly coveted by the more than 600 educators and programme providers worldwide.

The award was given to the Cathy for her contribution to promoting WSET within South Africa and for achieving excellent results. Ian Harris, Chief Executive of WSET praised Cathy for her hard work and dedication introducing WSET to a new country where the qualifications were unknown.

Her excellent use of social media to spread the WSET message and to promote her courses was also commented upon and mention was also made of her efforts to spread WSET outside South Africa into the rest of the continent. Cathy was at the award-ceremony last night to collect the award, a Riedel decanter, from WSET’s President, Gerard Bassset OBE MS MW MBA.  

She says, “I am so proud to be receiving this award today. It’s a testament to the last few years’ hard work by me, my team of amazing lecturers and all the hours studying put in my students. Jancis Robinson MW said on her recent visit to SA, ‘The increase in WSET students is a testament to a global increase in interest about wine.’ and as people become more interested, so we are seeing more demand for a global education to meet these needs.  I am very grateful to all the fabulous wineries, hotels, restaurants, retailers and more who have supported us over the years and hope that this endorsement will encourage others to try a WSET course and find out how why these really are the best wine courses you can do.”

The announcement was made at the annual awards ceremony at London’s historic Guildhall on Monday night. The Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) is the largest wine education provider in the world, operating in 63 countries via a network of more than 600 approved education programme providers. In the last 12 months alone, more than 56,000 people sat a WSET exam in one of 19 different languages.

For more information on The IWEC or for high-res photographs or comments, please email cathy@thewinecentre.co.za.

Follow Cathy on Twitter @CathyMarston 

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