About Your Hosts

Hello and thanks for stopping by!

My name is Cassandra, and I spend 99% of my time either living, travelling, writing or dreaming about wine regions and the stories of the people that make every bottle of wine unique and memorable.

Living in Margaret River, I’ve been working for many years now as a freelance wine and travel journalist, freelance travel writer, television presenter and photographer specialising in wine travel and luxe outdoor adventures for publications including ESCAPE Magazine, Delicious., Gourmet Traveller Wine and Halliday magazine and gracing the screen on Channel Nine’s Our State on a Plate. It’s an amazing career, however I can’t believe how many people email or message me every time I travel somewhere or publish a story:

“Hey Cass, I know you’ve recently been to X, Y and Z, and I’m thinking of heading off there next month. Where should I stay and what was that great winery you visited for lunch?”

“Hi Cassandra, I know you’ve been to the Great Southern heaps of times, but I was just wondering how long it takes to get from A to Z, and if you think that hike you did would be too hard without boots?”

“I need some good (but not too expensive or well known or funky) local red wine tonight for my first date. What would you suggest?”

“Can you please send me your itinerary and the must-visit wineries?”

So, I’ve decided it’s time to answer all those questions and more with a new home on the internet: Earn Your Vino. I’ve developed this platform to help YOU travel deeper, more enjoyably and more easily throughout Australia’s wine regions. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do, and all the sweat and sipping has been worth it!

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you’d like to share your stories, ideas, feedback, suggestions or just to say hello. And of course, I cannot wait to see you in person on one of our hosted experiences which we are planning regularly throughout the year.

Cheers,

Cassandra

Earn Your Vino’s partner in crime and Head of Operations is Stepan Libricky. With over 20 years of experience, his tourism and hospitality career includes hotel operations, immersive wine tourism, capital concept development and project management, tourism product development, and distribution channel management for names such as
Hilton Hotels (Europe and across Australia), Xanadu Wines and Leeuwin Estate. Stepan was a founding member of Ultimate Winery Experiences of Australia.

Stepan is also the Director of Stepladder TOURISM, where he provides tailored advisory services with a focus on immersive experiential travel, guest experience journey design and brand promise takeaway creation.

"Earn Your Vino has been a long time in the making and I'm thrilled that we can now offer an exciting new way for travellers to experience Western Australia's wine regions. It services those who have a taste for the finer things in life, yet are hungry for a little adventure, a little discovery, are curious and open minded. It is aimed at those who want to earn their drop of favourite wine and learn along the way.

It is a natural extension of what both Cassandra and I believe in – to travel slower, to engage deeper, to be more present, to share experiences with others, to have time to reflect and enjoy, to support genuine producers, and to reach for the soul of a place through people you meet.

To imagine, design and curate our itineraries, we have looked at our Western Australian wine-lovers paradise and opted to offer an experience in each region from an intimate, personable point of view.

I can't wait to meet you and help treat you to a lifetime connection to a place, it's people and a period of time like never before."

Cheers,

Stepan