The Wine Scholar Guild (WSG) has welcomed Andrew Jefford, award-winning author and columnist for Decanter and World of Fine Wine, who has joined the WSG education team as Academic Advisor.

Julien Camus, WSG president, comments, “We are thrilled to have Andrew come on board and are looking forward to his contribution towards our goal of becoming the pre-eminent provider of specialised wine study programs.”

Jefford has a long relationship with the Guild, having led a number of master level webinars and hosted student immersion trips to Bourgogne, Bordeaux, Alsace, Rhone, Southwest France, and Languedoc-Roussillon. Camus adds, “student feedback on Andrews’s webinars and trips is always outstanding. Everyone comments on his depth of knowledge, his unique and thoughtful perspectives and his disarming modesty and approachability. He embodies our core values and we welcome him to our team.”

In his new role, Jefford will provide strategic advice on WSG development plans, educational and editorial content, and will act as a liaison with key members of the wine-creation community. “Andrew joins us at a pivotal point in our growth as an organisation,” states Lisa Airey, director of education for the Guild; “We have many new initiatives in development and are extremely fortunate to be able to call upon Andrew’s talent and wisdom moving forward.”

“I’m thrilled to take on this role with the Wine Scholar Guild in addition to my other existing commitments,” Jefford comments. “I’ve got to know Julien and Lisa well over the past few years, and greatly respect the seriousness and thoroughness of the educational experience delivered through the Wine Scholar Guild programs. I’ve also been lucky enough to meet many Wine Scholar Guild students down the years via the immersion trips I have led. Meeting students from so many walks of life, and seeing their enthusiasm and openness, has been both a privilege and a career inspiration to me. I look forward to meeting many more WSG students in the years ahead.”

Among Jefford’s published works and awards, his book The New France (2002) gained the Wine Book of the Year at the Lanson Awards in 2003. 2018 saw a new edition of Andrew Jefford’s Wine Course (first published in 2008) while his acclaimed 2004 classic on the Hebridean island of Islay and its whiskies is to be republished in 2019, after sixteen successive reprints, as Whisky Island. He continues to write a regular monthly column for Decanter magazine, to contribute on a fortnightly basis to www.decanter.com and to act as Contributing Editor to The World of Fine Wine, as well as contributing a column to every issue of that quarterly review.