Dusan Jelic

Dusan is sunshine, Mediterranean food & above all wine-loving Social Media Manager at  Wines of the Balkans who passionately & persistently explores wines produced in & around the Balkan Peninsula of the South-Eastern Europe. He completed Mathematical High School and later earned a B.A. (Bachelor of Arts) degree in South Africa in 1998, majoring in Sociology and Russian. Dusan joined a United Nations mission in Bosnia & Herzegovina (UNMIBH) in 1998 and another UN mission - in Kosovo (Serbia) (UNMIK) in 2000 - as a legal interpreter/translator, mostly appearing before the UN-established criminal courts.

His M.A. (Master of Arts) degree in cultural studies, gained in 2008, helped him understand the troublesome Balkan region and also the essence of diplomacy. Dusan’s current PhD in cultural studies will further institutionalize his knowledge of cultural diplomacy, cultural management & international relations.

Dusan’s admiration for wine is omnipresent. Whether he deals with New or Old World wines; Prokupac, Tamjanika, Krokan or 'Trijumf' from Serbia, an excellent Dalmatian red wine ('Dingač'); Istrian Malvazija or Teran, great Bulgarian red or Hungarian sweet Tokaji, or a Bordeaux, Burgundy or classy Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, Pinotage or Shiraz from Western Cape in South Africa or great Weisser Riesling from the Rhine region of Germany, Austria or Alsace or superb Italian, Spanish & Portuguese wines - his passion for great wines seems to be inexhaustible.

Dusan lived in Cape Town since October 2009, got engaged in wine-networking, studied for Diploma in Wine at the Cape Wine Academy & joined www.wine.co.za as a Social Media Manager in May 2010. He returned to Belgrade in September 2011 in order to passionately enter & decipher the Balkan’s world of wine, which is comprised of 12 South-Eastern European countries. In August 2012 Dusan founded www.winesofbalkans.com - a content hub-in-making of electronically stored information of sublime Balkan wines and the awesome people behind these wines.

His goals are to master social media networking, learn subtle intricacies of wine sales and wine marketing, earn Cape Wine Diploma in Wine, enter more vigorously a field of Balkan wine tourism and continue discovering various features of that fascinating topic of wine.

Dusan Jelic will be delivering a talk titled

Branding Balkan Wines in the Context of the South-Eastern European Wine Tourism

Get Dusan's speaker notes here>>

See the complete Conference programme of talks