Meet Our Specialists

Helena Staels

Helena is a founding partner of Slowwines. She was born in Aalst, Belgium, where she was raised, and also studied at Ghent University. She has lived in Spain since 1988 and has a good all-round knowledge about the country. She worked as an interpreter in Madrid and started her own business in Salamanca in 1992, teaching Spanish as a foreign language and doing translation work. She is in daily contact with people from all over the world. Hospitality and communication are amongst her strengths.
While doing translation work for several wineries, she was exposed to the world of winemaking and travel. She began to study oenology and loves wine-tasting sessions. Helena has personally visited all of the Slowwines wineries to design itineraries and expand wine tourism concepts for the company. She’s fluent in Spanish, French, Dutch, English, German and Portuguese. Her leadership and organizational skills allow her to personally oversee every detail of the Slowwines tours.

Pierre Balsam

Pierre is a founding partner of Slowwines. He is a French-Danish binational and has been living abroad after his university education. He is multilingual. He developed a passion for nature and trekking at an early age. For him, discovering new places is highly intertwined with the possibility to get a sight of local or migrating birds, discover the wines and food and meet with the people who have a story.

French-Danish Pierre has totally adopted the Slowwines project as the main entrepreneurship venture. 
Nature and trekking were his first hobbies that led to numerous travels, then he started to get more insight into slow travel and experience travel together with a growing interest in oenology and quite naturally designed the first wine and food experiences for a public of foodies curious by nature.  He has diverse experience in industrial organizations, having specialized in logistics and lean supply-chain in the early days. After years of executive position in the corporate world, he started to lead bird tours in the many natural reserves; and walking / hiking trips to Santiago de Compostela, accompanying pilgrims.
The last few years have been truly enriching experiences, with the development of the slowwines innitative, the collaboration with vintners in Spain and other agents worldwide. Pierre jointly designs and promotes the wine routes and communication job around this project.  Not so oddly, you might encounter him in one of his playgrounds: Rioja, Galicia, Priorat, Penedès,  Jerez- Sherry in Andalusia and Binissalem in Mallorca.

Slowwines

We specialize in customized, full package itineraries that we believe will offer an audacious service throughout the many wine regions of the peninsula. All in all, the two founders master five languages. We are elaborating the highest level of service to bring the best possible experience to our clients. The new wine tourism venture gives us a true sense of labor and exhilarating perspectives. We will strive to continue growing as experts in this culinary and wine world, hoping to gain one fine day a deserved recognition from our peers and the main players in the business.