THE CRU

The Cru project aims to provide one on one teaching via the internet to aspirant wine professionals who are being sponsored. For the financially challenged students who are less fortunate and do not benefit from any sponsorship, we offer a bursary scheme.

'The Knowledge' is the vocational one on one online course in wine service proficiency for students who are sponsored by their employer. As a student you will be exposed to all elements involved in the wine business including viticulture, vinification, and appellation laws. You will begin to develop your blind tasting skills by studying old and new world wine regions as well as sparkling and fortified wines. In addition, you will build on your service skills, food and wine pairing techniques, and proper storage practices. The goal of this course is to advance your understanding of wine and winemaking in order to prepare you for the job of sommelier.

'The Protégé Plan' helps financially challenged applicants to turn their dreams into reality by granting them up to a 30% rebate on the tuition fee. To participate in the Protégé Plan, you should be working in a sector of the wine industry, the horeca or hospitality sector, or in a relevant consultancy, or marketing role and undertake the course as a part of your organisation’s training programme or as individual study leave. You employer needs to recommend you to the registrar.

THE PLATFORM
Specialising in providing wine courses online, we offer the ideal virtual learning environment. The platform comprises virtual classes, a tasting room, video room, chat room and much more. All with in easy reach at the click of a button. Once you have enrolled, you receive your student ID and password to access.

The wine and hospitality trade has experienced a need not only for more, but especially for better and more specifically-trained wine professionals.

Properly motivated and trained wine professionals make a tremendous difference to the promotion of wine knowledge and appreciation, thereby boosting wine sales. Logically, it is one of the important goals of this College to offer wine business, marketing and management courses that form, motivate and train wine professionals, at all levels, and in a modern way by utilising up-to-date technologies.

In pursuit of such wine proficiency, a separate division, which we prefer to call the CRU has been set up to cater for vocational training on a one on one basis.
We co-ordinate the design and curricula of these result-orientated courses specifically for wine professionals that need a different type of wine education, seeking a different outcome.

A lot of careful thought and planning went into the design and content of the Cru Courses  We drew on the combined experience of all types of wine professionals in the wine trade in the UK, Europe, Australia and California.

Based upon our research and feed-back from students we have designed these courses to be of different levels of difficulty and lengths. They are flexible so that they cater for the different branches of the wine industry.

In addition, because there are some students who wish to acquire knowledge of topics which do not form a part of a specific course, the courses are modular. Some of the modules are compulsory to a course, the rest you can follow for non-Certificate, Diploma or Associate Degree purposes.