Jolene Janse van Rensburg: Swartland Wine Route
The telephone call came on Wednesday morning, the 6th of February, at 10:30: “They are taking in grapes at Houdconstant, and if you want to be part of the experience you had better get a move on”, said Des Green of Greenacres Holdings.

Well, I have always wanted to get my hands dirty and experience wine making first hand ... To cut a long story short, approximately an hour later I parked my car in front of the old shed at Houdconstant farm in Porterville. By the time I got there the Chenin Blanc grapes were already crushed and destalked. Fan Olivier, the owner of Houdconstant farm, and Jacob Peu were busy measuring the Balling of the juice when I arrived.

I was welcomed with open arms and immediately put to work sweeping out the shed. In the meantime Fan was frantically trying to arrange a forklift to hoist the container with juice and pulp in order to make it easier to extract the free-fun-juice, actually it’s free-run-juice. “ ‘n Boer maak ‘n plan” they say, and at the end we decided to forget about the forklift and extract the juice manually – which is easier said than done, believe me! Jacob and I were in charge of extracting the free-run-juice, whilst the others filled buckets from the top of the container and deposited the juice and pulp in the basket press.

There I sat on an overturned crate with a large bucket between my legs and a sieve in my hand – not very ladylike or glamorous I must add. Jacob used a small bucket to collect juice via the tap on the side of the container; the juice was then poured through the sieve into the larger bucket. The pulp collected in the sieve went into the basket press. While our hands were kept busy pouring and pressing, Jacob and I had lots of time to get to know each other.     

Jacob is a soft spoken gentleman with a thirst for knowledge and unstoppable enthusiasm about wine. He met and became friends with Des Green at the first Soweto Wine Festival some years ago and later became the BEE partner and Director of Greenacres Holdings. Greenacres Garagiste’ is one of the entities of Greenacres Holdings. Being a sales fundi and wine lover, city slicker Jacob is now realizing his life-long dream to make and market his own handcrafted wine to the black market in his home town Soweto. He is very excited about the venture and is looking forward to launching the wine in April 2008 under their “Jacob’s Quest” label.

The day flew by in between hard work, interesting conversation and crisis management…. Half way through pressing the grapes, the cooling tank broke and Fan had to call in help to fix it. Fortunately Fan was well prepared and plastic cool drink bottles filled with frozen water were used to cool down the juice, whilst the machine was repaired.

My very interesting, educational experience came to an end at 5 o’clock the afternoon when the last grapes were finally pressed and 750 liters of juice was collected. I left Fan, Jacob and the rest of the team behind and headed home, tired, but with a feeling of satisfaction that I contributed and played a small part in something that is larger than me and that can be enjoyed by others in future.

A few days after my experience at Houdconstant Fan reported that the juice was left on the lees for 24 hours to settle, after which it was pumped over to a different tank. The yeast was added and fermentation started.
What a privilege to have met and worked side by side with Jacob and Fan. I can’t wait to taste the result!

Bottoms up…as the captain would say…