Sometimes a wine career doesn’t begin in a château or at a university, but simply behind a shop counter. For Wietze Snaak, it all started at seventeen, as the youngest shop assistant at wine merchant Jos Beeres in Groningen. What began as a side job grew into a lifelong passion. Ten years later, he took over the historic company and further developed it into a modern wine business with national recognition.

By now, Wietze is much more than just a wine merchant. Many wine enthusiasts know him from television, where he regularly discusses wines and makes the story behind the bottle accessible to a wide audience. With his own program Snaakse Streken, he travels through wine regions in Europe to meet winemakers and show how landscape, culture, and tradition come together in the glass.

In The Wine Talks, we talk about his remarkable journey through the wine world: from shop assistant to entrepreneur, from tasting room to television camera. Naturally, we also discuss what drives him, how he selects wines, and why the story behind a bottle is just as important to him as the taste.

An open conversation about entrepreneurship, passion for wine, and the people who bring color to the world of wine