Born and bred in Worcester, Shandré van der Merwe grew up in a family where wine culture was always very important. This ignited her passion for wine. After matriculating from Montana High School, she started her career in 2015 with short stint in the corporate world, where it quickly became clear that it wasn't the path for her. This was followed by five years as accommodation manager at Leipzig Country House in the Nuy Valley. As this is a small family-run farm where everyone pitches in, her love for wine quickly grew. In 2022 she took the leap to make another career shift to the wine industry. She now works for De Wet Cellar in Worcester as a tasting room manager, where she gets to live her passion for wine everyday and share it with others.
Shandré was crowned the country’s best wine writer on 7 December at the SA Wine Writer of the Year awards ceremony at the Lanzerac Hotel, Stellenbosch. Shandré’s overall winning entry was a magazine article on the subject "the future of e-commerce in wine" and she expounded the angle that while the Covid-19 pandemic brought many challenges to billions around the world, “one of the few silver linings that emerged was the boom of the e-commerce industry”.
She's currently studying towards her certificate wine course through the Cape Wine Academy and hopes to proceed all the way to Cape Wine Master one day.
In 2023, Shandré made WineLand Media's 30 Under 30 list of 30 young professionals recognised for their contributions to the South African wine industry.