Ashley Klassen

Ashley Klassen is the 3rd runner up for the Inter Hotel Challenge Wine Steward of the Year 2023. He is at the Queen Victoria Hotel & Manor House Waterfront working with Pongrácz & Cruz Vodka

I’m analytical, creative, friendly, strange, charismatic, persuasive and a quick thinker.

My role model and guidance coach, currently steering me in the right direction, is my senior manager, Jason La Fleur. He leads with humility, respect, and professionalism, and truly believes in his staff, encouraging us to keep aiming high.

I’m reading Feeling is the Secret by Neville Goddard. It’s a self-help book that explores the profound influence of our inner states on our external reality. The author is regarded as one of the greatest law of attraction teachers of the twentieth century.

What stuck with me during the Grape to Glass (part of the Inter Hotel Challenge) training week, is how little gets wasted or discarded in the process of making wine and spirits. Although each site we visited is unique, they do share many similarities when it comes to operations.