Willem Hagedoorn
Grappi's co-founder and wine lead: a hospitality and wine professional with more than twenty years of hands-on experience, and the founder of The Wine Junkies.
Who is Willem?
Willem Hagedoorn is Grappi's co-founder and the wine authority behind the app. He has worked with wine since 2001 and is today Deputy Hotel Director at NH Collection Helsinki Grand Hansa, part of Minor Hotels, in Helsinki.
More than twenty years with wine, across luxury hotels in Europe and Asia, with roughly 250 to 500 wines tasted every year.
Two decades with wine
Willem caught the wine bug young, serving at tastings for WorldWideWine.nl while still at school. Wine then stayed a constant through more than fifteen years in luxury and upscale hotels in Europe and Asia, where he built wine lists, handled buying, trained food-and-beverage teams and ran pairing dinners.
Wineries he has visited
Willem's knowledge is first-hand. He has walked the rows and talked to winemakers in regions across the world, including a visit to Henschke in the Barossa, where some vines go back to around 1860.
Training and focus
Willem holds a BBA in Hotel Management from Hotel School The Hague. His wine expertise is hands-on rather than certificate-based, built on years of wine lists, training, pairings and a lot of tasting.
He is strongest on value, the price-to-quality question most drinkers actually care about, and has a soft spot for cool-climate wines. He tastes and works in Dutch, English and German.
The Wine Junkies
Willem founded the wine blog The Wine Junkies in 2017, and relaunched it in 2026 after a quiet spell. His favourite piece is his visit to Henschke in the Barossa; more recent writing covers Alpine wine and a mono-cépage challenge.
Why he built Grappi
Willem co-founded Grappi with Elard Tissot van Patot to give people a simple tool to keep track of their wines and cellar and to take on wine challenges, so they discover which wines they genuinely love. His philosophy is simple: wine is better when you share it.
How Willem shapes Grappi
Willem leads the wine thinking behind Grappi, from the pairing logic to the way the app scores and explains a bottle. The pairing guides and grape guides on this site are built on that approach and on established sommelier practice, which is why they aim to be clear and honest rather than snobbish.
Put that expertise in your pocket
Grappi turns Willem's kind of wine thinking into a free app: scan any label, understand the wine, track your cellar and find the right pairing.
Find Willem at LinkedIn · The Wine Junkies · Instagram