 Good evening everybody. Welcome to the Private Property Farming podcast. My name is Mbali Mokko, your host, as always every Tuesdays and Thursdays, right here on Private Property at 8pm. Thank you so much for watching yet another amazing episode that we're about to have this evening. And we are joined by a husband and wife duo who are in the wine making industry. And we're going to be talking all about the process of making wine or the wine making process. So for all you wine lovers, I believe that this episode is for you just to understand what goes behind the scenes in making and processing wine. Before we get into our guests this evening, I just want to remind you that we have the real the real estate industry summit, which is brought to you by Private Property in partnership with Apsa. And that will be taking place on the 29th of October in 2021. So this is a wonderful opportunity to expand your real estate knowledge and expertise and also hear from some of the most influential players in the property sector. So if you're an investor in the sector or looking to buy a house, I believe that this summit is for you. It will be held virtually so be sure to tune in into Facebook on the 29th of October from 9am to 1pm. The link of the event is on the comment section and also you can catch further details which will be available in this description, or you can visit www.realestateindustriesummit.co.z. So yeah, I think please definitely log in and you can get all your information regarding real estate. And also I just want to remind you that we are running a competition called Know Your Crop and we have two fantastic winners today. If you could just give me a second and I'll read their names. I really hope that this time you could claim your prize because I will know your crop competition is running and you can claim $500 in cash prize. So our winners for this evening are Steyr Lord Dillon and I believe you commented around potatoes on Facebook and I will read your comment quickly. Your crop was potatoes and you shared some information around potatoes and that was the potato is a starter tuber of the plant and it is a root vegetable and then the plant itself is perennial in the nightshade family. And you go on to give us some technical information around the shapes and the colors and you also mentioned that potatoes are prepared in many ways skin on or peeled, whole or cut. So it sounds like Steyr Lord definitely knows his information around potato farming and our second winner for this evening from Twitter is Gina Baby. And her hashtag is at know me underscore Maloy. And she mentions that whole or chopped tomatoes can be preserved canned roasted grilled dried or frozen sun dried tomatoes are staple of Italian cuisine. And she goes to say hashtag know your crop hashtag farming podcast hashtag episode 100. So this competition of know your crop with the private property farming podcast is a build up to our 100th episode which will in next week Tuesday. So to use Stella Dillon and at know me underscore Maloy, please comment on tonight's show to claim your 500 grand cash prize, and I will confirm that by the end of the show so make sure you definitely comment so that you could win your 500 grand cash prize. Right. So let's get into our guests this evening. I'm joined by Carl Alstrom and Dr. Answa Steyn. And they are from Donegal Wine Estate. Good evening, Carl. Good evening, Answa. How are you doing? Oh, we're very well. Thank you so much. Thank you for having us. We are very privileged to be on your show tonight. Hello there. Good evening. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's great to have you and I was like I was saying behind the scenes that I think it's our first time having wine farmers or people in the agribusiness who specifically are focused in wine. So just to start off the show, maybe if you could tell us a little bit about Donegal Wine Estate and where you are situated. We'll take that one. Okay. So basically it's quite easy. We started off making wine because we drank too much. Easy. And we lived in Jovo and we thought the only way we can help the situation is why don't we make more wine. So all food went, got on a plane and we flew down to Cape Town and we hunted a wine maker who ever wanted to help us and teach us making wine. We ended up meeting Neil Bester who is probably South Africa's best wine maker. He is now retired and he worked, he didn't work for Placidum Mor, which was part of the Distal Winery. And back then when we met, we asked him can he teach us how to make wine and he said yes we can. And then we realized that he loves Victoria Bay and this is where our aging facility is. And our aging facility is in Victoria Bay and basically we made a deal. For every week that I spend in his cellar learning how to make wine, you can actually then come in and stay for free with us in Victoria Bay. Well, it turned out that he drew the short straw because we spent way more time in his cellar learning how to make wine than he had been coming to visit Victoria Bay. And that's how the whole event started. And basically in a nutshell, after our first vintage, we then purchased an orchard or vineyard in Milesbury which is the Swatbad region. And basically we've got our vineyard and our vineyard is our block and we made our first wine. And that's where Answa, my wife, she then entered us into the Veritas wine competition without all of us knowing. And basically in a nutshell, we won the Gold Award for the best Shiraz in the country on our first vintage. And that's where our whole lives came around because then people asked, oh, where can we taste the wine? What can we do having one of the best Shiraz's in the country? And basically we had property in Victoria Bay and that's when we built the aging facility which is about 300 meters underground and 7 meters underground. The facility that we have. Oh, that sounds amazing, Carl. Answa, what made you decide to put Donegal wine estate into this competition? I mean, were you nervous at all or were you thinking? I think we've kind of like cracked it and our wine tastes so great that it should be nominated in getting an award. No, no, no. Well, the thing is, I immediately thought the moment I tasted that wine, I thought this is the best wine I've tasted in my whole life. Obviously, I was not very objective, but it was apparently one of the best wines I've ever tried. So we, as Carl said, that was sort of the culprit that stood on many things since then. So this was in 2017. So it was our first vintage and our first Shiraz. And we came out with a Veritas Gold being one of the best Shiraz's in the country at that stage. And from there, things just grew. So we started to move down from Joburg to George at Victoria Bay. And we had a house here that we built about four years prior to the wine. And we decided that because of the wine now, let's come and build a cellar, let's build a tasting room. And it's now four years later, it seems longer, I must say. And currently we have just brought out our first white wine, which is a beautiful Chardonnay. Another Shiraz. So it's amazing that Shiraz started all of what is happening with us now. And I think anyone who has visited us or is planning to visit us, I think they will stand amazed at the fact that we started from nothing. And we are currently sitting with, what do we call this? Call help me. A miracle. Absolutely a miracle. We just wanted to make wine for us and now it's a miracle. We wanted to make Croft wine like you make Croft beer. And now we're from 8000 tons. We've increased all the way to 15 tons. So it's been an incredible journey. And I have to say that I'm going to be sneaking in the sense that Denmark has just ordered our whole 2020 vintage. So that is fantastic. Wow. I mean, your trajectory in the space just in four years is just amazing. And yeah, you've just literally turned your love of wine into a successful business. So congratulations to the milestones that you've reached so far. And I believe if you're doing so great now, I mean, imagine where you'll be in the next 10 years, but I just want to go into. You'll actually be drunk and lying on the ground in 10 years from now. There's no doubt about that. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. But I just want to go into the more technical stuff around wine making, you know, you started off just from the processing side and then you bought your orchard. So just take us through that process like how long does it take to grow the grapes and then the aging process? How long does that take before, you know, it's sitting in our wine glass at home before we, you know, consume it? Okay. So there's two avenues that you can go down. One is you can either do a, I'm going to say, high-end wine or a, we in South Africa don't have low-end wines. We really got good quality wines. Wherever you buy, we've got really, really good terroir and we've got good grapes. So we got any, any vineyards where you go, it's in relationship to overseas, you've got excellent, excellent, excellent wine. The whole thing, how it happens is it's in terms of your space that you have in turn fermentation and your time that you can put your volume of wine in your barrels. So if you, if you have a lot of bulk wine, your volume that you can store is only so much. So you need to get it into the bottles and the sooner you get your wine into the bottles, it is deemed as an immediate consumption wine. It's not for your wine that lies for 10 or 20 years because you really need to really mature your wine in the barrel for at least, you know, 12 to 14 months and then bottle it and then age it. So if you, if you got a lot of bulk wine and you, and you got only a set amount of storage when you do your fermentation, you do your fermentation on a very fast space and then unfortunately you then bottle it immediately and you age it in the bottle. The problem with that process is that your infusion that you have into your wine is limited. So even though you had a very good wine, you, as a farmer, you got to look at your cash flow because basically remember end of the day, we, we, we not all these immense farmers that got bulk of wine. I mean, we're the first generation of wine makers. The other wine makers are seventh, eighth generation. I mean, they, the vineyards have been paid for the implementation have been paid for, et cetera, et cetera. And it makes a big difference. Having said all of that, the bottom line is in South Africa, I feel there's no reason at all to have a inferior wine. Our wine in the whole industry is amazing. Any bottle of wine that you open up in South Africa, it's a South African wine is incredible. I mean, if you've traveled abroad and you've opened up a wine in any country at a price of seven euros or $15 a bottle and you drink it. You think, oh my word, what on earth did I buy here? And in South Africa, you can, you can get a bottle for $18 to $150 a bottle and it's superior wine. And I think that this is the whole thing that we, we as South Africans forget is that we have incredible wine at an incredible price. And we really need to cherish this part of our industry. What made you decide as a team to then purchase your own orchard? Why could you not go the route of just, you know, partnering with a wine farmer and you are just doing that, that whole aging process and selling to the end consumer? Okay, I will take this one if I may. What is the following? We are not really farmers number one. Paul is a structural engineer and I am a medical doctor. So we from the start knew that we cannot necessarily grow the grapes. We did not ever ask if we could on our property, but the reality is just being situated in George in the Western Cape. The weather here is not necessarily conducive for good grapes. We've talked with a lot of experts in the fields and they say, well, in all fairness, if you really want to grow grapes, you can maybe try to grow a white varietal, which would not need as much meat as the red varietals. And we just realized that in all, and also when you plant, it takes four years before you get to first harvest. And they said, we don't necessarily have such a big crop that we can necessarily take 10 hectares and plant grapes and wait for four years and put in the capital for that. So I think this is good news for anyone who is like us in terms of wanting to do this. And who has a question for wine, that there is options available that you can actually approach a real farmer that is good with what they do and buy their grapes from them. Because this also helps them, I think, in their industry, obviously. And our wine maker who has taught us how to do what we do, he said, that is the way you should go if you were us. And that's why we also followed that route. And I think that's good news for people who want to do what we've done. You don't necessarily have to be a wine grape farmer to make your own wine. I think that's a wonderful thing. I think that's a great opportunity and a great strategy that you have adopted. And with what Carl was saying, that many of the farmers are pretty much established farmers, generational farmers. And I can presume that before a farmer puts a grape tree rather on the ground, they need to have contracts in place. So how difficult or easy was it to approach farmers and sign on the dotted line to say we can purchase X tons of grapes per season. My assumption is that a lot of the farmers, because they're established, because they're generational farmers, they already have contracts in place which limits the pool of sourcing grapes. So was it difficult for you guys? Maybe also just share some challenges maybe that you might experience in the early years. So it's quite easy because I think the misconception about how you get around farming is always a race thing. And I just want to debunk that whole race thing. It's literally going to do with money. And basically the farmer, whoever he is, has got a set amount of grapes at a set amount of price. And the highest bidder will get the grapes. So you can go to any farmer and offer him X amount of money for his grapes and he will produce to you. So it's the highest bidder. It's got absolutely nothing to do with politics or anything like that. It's about the highest bidder. And the bottom line is that in our case, we went and we negotiated because remember when we started out, we didn't need a lot of grapes. So we could take our savings, which we did, because this is our answer on myself, we live, we save money. And saving is a very important part of our lives and the way we live. And we took all our savings and we went to the A farmer and we shopped around. And we got to A farmer that had a vineyard and a section of the vineyard, which is a block. And we picked him down and said, every year we want the same block and we bought that block. And that's the way we negotiated. And it's all about negotiation. It's all about the person, the individual to go and negotiate and pay the money. And it's not as if we pay premium. We pay absolutely a premium price for the grapes of the Shiraz varietal. We pay premium and it's a win-win situation for both because we come as a small boutique. We pay premium. Our clients pay premium for the taste of our wine and everybody wins. If that same farmer would take his blocks and give it to the big operations, they'll get half the price is what we pay. So we pay double, but we ensure that that block will always be our block. Still with you, Carl. I'll come back to you, Dr Anso. I just want to find out, what makes the wine processing so premium and special? So you're purchasing the grapes from a farmer and then you mentioned that it goes through a staging process. And as you're talking, I know there's various groups or classifications of wine like a block, a Shiraz, a Chardonnay. So having taken the grapes, from a processing level, what makes it... I don't know, how do you keep it long enough so that you could determine this is a Chardonnay, this is a Blanc. Take us through that. First of all, you've got to understand this is outward, it works with varietals. So let's take my body, let's take my face. So I'm a Mpandlana, which is for all the people there. I speak Ysizulu and Totsital. So I'm a Mpandlana. Now I didn't choose to be a Mpandlana. Nature decided it right from the beginning. When I was in Madrid, the tide receded and I started losing my hair. So you get different varietals. A varietal means a certain type of grape. So you get a Mpandlana, so you get a Chardonnay. Maybe a Chardonnay, that grape is a Chardonnay. It can't be a Shiraz, it can't be anything else but a Chardonnay. You get a Shiraz. Now the type of varietals that is individual varietals, I think they talk about 200-300 varietals in the world. It's exceptional and all of those varietals are actually made right around the world. And every wine maker that makes the wine wants to make the best of that varietal. That's the reason why I think people stop making wine because they want to work. I mean, no one sets out making wine to lose. I mean, that's just how life is. So that's the varietal and then after we get the varietal, then you've got a stage where you can blend. So now you can blend, you get certain types of blends. You get a Bordeaux style blend, you get a Rome style blend. Now these are all historical blends that comes from Europe. Now you've got to ask yourself the question, why are you following Europe? I mean, the bottom line is they've been in this game for so many years dating back to the Romans. So you've got vignettes in the Roman Conti, which is a French wine, which was vignettes that were started by the Romans. That's five, six hundred years to a thousand years back. Now you can imagine, why would you want to try changing the recipe if the wheel has already been invented. So in a nutshell, we started off doing a Rome style blend and a Bordeaux style blend. So you take those varietals and you mix them to make something unique. The craziest thing about Africa is that that whole region from France, Stala and Bosch, all the way to Momsbury, they are in valleys and those valleys are incredibly rich soil. So that's what they call the terroir, which is a French word mean soil. I mean, that's the first thing that I started to debunk is there's a whole world of wine and mystery about wine. That's really, people, let's just stop there. If you drink wine and you enjoy it, that means that is a good wine for you. The French always say, they've got a saying, art is art. Meaning every person, every individual has got a different take on art. So wine, food, anything that is about your personal judgment, your personal taste. I mean, we can have three people in one room and there will be three different views about what actually happened. So in that sense, we've got to understand that when it comes to varietals and blending, we, Antoine myself, we blend according to what we like. And for us, people really like what we blend. So we make wine for ourselves. We don't make wine for a market or anything like that. We've got the motto in amongst ourselves is that if no one buys our wine, at least we will drink it. So we don't sell our wine, at least we'll have a good party. Yeah, yeah, charity begins at home, isn't it? Is that what they say? Antoine, congratulations again with your orders at Denmark. Maybe I just want to find out, how were you impacted during the various lockdown levels where you couldn't sell wine? And what did that do to Donegal wine estate? And I'm just happy to hear that, you know, you've got the orders. So with the easing of the restrictions, has it made it better? And just, yeah, how were you really impacted, especially in that processing or blending stage of winemaking? I think from our side, we were really lucky that we had our real jobs to actually keep Donegal going. We were working at Donegal and we could actually continue paying the salaries and looking after them, even though Donegal did not give us any income. So I think regarding that, we were lucky that we had other things going. I mean, I worked all through lockdown. It was just lockdown and I wasn't able to work. So Paul also is an engineer. So they struggled. I mean, I think the first year of lockdown, I mean, if we can talk now about years, not even months anymore, was the people times. But our business motto is that we look off to the people that work for us and work with us. And I think it's for us, it has turned around to be a big success that I think on Paul's side is an engineer. He has six guys working for him. And we've also locked down with continued paying salaries, even though there was no work. And same with Donegal. Luckily, on my side, I don't have such, or I do the work. I don't have that kind of overhead. But because of the fact that we have other income, sorry, there you go. And it helped that we could go through it. And I must say, thank you to lockdown. We have realized what's important to us. And we have, and people have worked for us and with us. There's a camaraderie that has developed because we are a team and we love each other and we love Donegal. And Paul's team on his side in terms of engineering, they love that side of the business because we've looked after them. And I think that's really important. I think that's a mistake that lots of people have done that in terms of being employers of other people through lockdown, not to look after them. And I think people really say, thank goodness we had the means to look after the people that worked with us and for us. And I think we look back and we're grateful. We're grateful that we were able to look after them. And yes, we're at the spot. We're moving forward and we brain fast. So that's amazing. And I think that's a side that most people often overlook. They forget that as much as we are farmers or we're in the agro-processing space or just in agriculture, we are still running businesses. And at the end of the day, we still have overheads that we need to adhere to and manage and keep. So, Carl, this is my last question to you. And I'll ask Dr. Answad, my last question to her as well. What brand are you marketing your wine under Donegal wine estate? And where can we get it as local South Africans before you send everything off to Denmark? Okay, so basically this is our bottle of wine. This is the 2017 winner. This is our baby. You can get all our wine on our website or come to our seller, which is Victoria Bay. You can go to our website, www.donegal.co.za. And you can purchase online and we deliver all over the country. Yeah, great. We actually have a question here from YouTube, from Mudiri Mukala. And he or she says, what is the first thing I need to know or learn before I can start my wine making journey as someone with no prior knowledge? So maybe two or three tips for someone who wants to get into the wine making industry but has no knowledge. So, you know, first gen agripreneurs like yourself. Okay, I'll answer that one. When we just started, I need to just give you this little piece of information. Paul and I met later in life. We met when we were both past our thirties and we were both quite nerdy before that. So what happened when we actually, when we met and we were dating, we used to go to restaurants and sit at the bar and look at all the bottles and tell the bartender, we want to taste that, we want to taste that, we want to taste that. So that's how we sort of, you need to learn to realize what you like. Because honestly, you don't want to make wine that you don't like. And that's what we decided at Omegle. We are never going to put anything in a bottle that we don't like. So you need to, you need to sort of teach your taste buds what it is that you like. And I think from there on, Paul can go on, but I think we were lucky meeting Neil Bester at a winemaker's dinner and sitting next to him and having him as our mentor through the whole thing saying, okay, now when you make wine, you do this. So when you, at this stage in the winemaking process, you put this enzyme with and then you put this apple yeast and then you do that. Honestly, we were clueless at the start. Luckily, where we are now, we know a little bit more, but I think that's great. But we still know nothing. We actually know nothing. We just, we like nice wine. I think that's the most important thing. So we were lucky enough to have a winemaker by our side and guiding us. So I do think as a, as someone who knows nothing, you need to approach someone who is a winemaker as, as their profession. Honestly, we couldn't do it without. Actually, we couldn't do it without Neil Bester. Neil Bester is the most incredible person in the world. He took our hand and he, and he guided us to do everything. Now I have to tell you this. You've got to understand every winemaker out there who's, who's credible winemakers. They all would love to teach other people to make wine. So I reckon it is the, the onus is on the person with the guts and the glory to go out there to look for yourself for a winemaker. So I want to make wine help me. How do I do that? Because that's what we did. And winemakers, they, you know what the wine industry, what I've learned is that all the winemakers are the whole fraternity. They're very helpful. They, they like to help one another. They like to, to, to impart of information. They don't impart of their secrets. I mean, that's, that's, and, and that you can understand. But they really help people with everything. And it boils down to, to, to the food spot. Just go for it. You can make it. If you want to, you can do it. I mean, here we are sitting four years later. We, I can't, I don't even know how many bottles of wines we've made, of wine we've made in total. But honestly, it blows your mind. It just stopped doing it. And if you, if you're passionate about it, you will succeed. I think that's the message we can shout out to you tonight. Yeah. Remember, we got on a plane from Joburg and we flew down to Cape Town. We made one. We won a medal. And then people asked me, so, so where's your winery? And we said, we live in Joburg. And they were saying, what? You live in Johannesburg? And yes. Yes. So you just got to do it. And I think what you need is red hair because this red chick, she's so fiery and feisty. She gets it done. Anything is done with this red. Yeah. So what I'm hearing you say is that for a person who wants to go into the wine making industry, firstly, they must love their wine, you know, and understand, you know, they understand a palette and make wine that they would want to drink. Secondly, find a mentor or someone who's very experienced in the wine industry to just show you the ropes and you just have to have the guts to be able to approach these individuals because it is an open industry where people are willing to help. But obviously not share secrets because it's still their comparative advantage. But there are people who are willing to help in the places where you could go to to sum up the show. And it's been so amazing. I think we could go on for an hour. So what's next for Donegal Wine Estates? Any more awards that you're trying to sneak in maybe for 2022? And just, yeah, just what's next for Donegal in the next three to five years? Well, I think we are at a stage where we realize that we've been holding back in a way in terms of Donegal and our tasting room and our wine. I want to call it a venue. It's an aging cellar. I call it a venue. Paul calls it an aging cellar. It's a beautiful space. And we have, we're at a spot where we need to know that or we're at a crossroad. It's a better world. The fire is now lit and the explosives has been lit. So I think the explosion is bound to happen. I think that's where we're at. We've also, we are very, very, very excited. We've partnered with many other people to expand what we do, to do concerts in our backyard, to do tastings of, can I say? May I? Okay, we've just spoken to, I think they were on the show before, the Zany Wagyu people. They are going to come here. Wagyu nights, we're going to do that often. So we're just excited about what's A8. We don't really know what's A8, but what we do know is we need to make more wine because all of a sudden people are buying our wine and they're loving our wine. So I think that let's talk again in two years' time and who knows where we'll be. Absolutely. Carl and I'm so, I just love your energy and I'm just so grateful that, you know, you've really turned something that you loved, love rather and still do into a business. So you've definitely inspired me with your conversation tonight and I wish you all the best with Donegal. You're a vegetable. Yes, I'm a vegetable farmer. What vegetable? Peppers. Can you please send us some peppers because we use so many peppers in our dishes. Awesome. I'll definitely come with a box, but I'll definitely come in and spend a few days there in the Western Cape and get to taste some wine, I suppose. Yeah. Absolutely. Great. Thank you so much for your time this evening. That was Carl Alstrom and Dr. Answa Stain from Donegal Wine Estate and they were telling us about the winemaking process and just giving us a background into how they started their business. I think it is an inspirational story, especially for someone who's looking to go into the winemaking industry who doesn't have an orchard but really wants to have a premium wine brand that you could sell locally and abroad. If you missed this episode, you could definitely catch it on our YouTube channel under the farming podcast playlist. That's Private Property YouTube Channel Farming Podcast Playlist. And this is episode 99. We're looking forward to the 100th episode next week Tuesday and to Stella Dillon as well as Gina Baby on Twitter who goes by the name also at Nomi underscore Malloy. Unfortunately, you for feature price because you didn't comment on the show this evening. And so that 500 grand cash prize will roll over to somebody else for next week Tuesday. Don't forget the real estate industry summit of October. However, that's it for me. I will see you next Tuesday at 8 p.m. Take care.