There is “no greatness without goodness,” Johan Reyneke tells me on a visit to Reyneke Wines. He was quoting the Latin proverb from Yann Martel’s novel, Life of Pi - “Nil Magnum Nisi Bonum.” Thinking about it afterward, the quote was the best befitting introduction to our talk about the “goodness” of Reyneke’s escapade into biodynamic wine, and the “greatness” of his flagship Cornerstone Project.
“I expect your tastebuds to be pleasantly satisfied by the great taste of Reyneke Cornerstone (2017) wine,” he said. He had a big wine glass and bottle of red wine in hand. “Would you like to take a sip and tell me what you think? If I remember correctly, you don’t drink wine. Is that right?” he asked. Before I could respond, he says, “This is the wine that might convince you to change your mind. The taste and the backstory together.”
Even though I am a self-declared teetotaller, I did not want to disappoint him. So, I smelled the nice aroma, as he swirled the wine in a wine glass to eliminate foul-smelling compounds, he told me.
I boldly took a tiny sip.
Then, I curiously asked, what’s in it? “This is a 54% Cabernet Sauvignon, 32% Cabernet Franc and 14% Merlot, matured for 18 months in French oak that is 30% new,” he explained. I chose to offer no opinion of my own on the taste. I wasn’t sure what to say. He then showed me the wine’s tasting notes and ratings from wine critic Christian Eedes, who gave a very persuasive score of 89/100.
Right at that moment, I was sold. I reserved a rather pricey bottle for an old-time friend of mine. I was quite certain she would love it and have more to say about it than I did.
Reyneke recommended that we should stand outside between the first biodynamic vineyards in South Africa, as he explained to me how his purpose-driven mission into biodynamic wine production began.
Johan Reyneke is a viticulturist and the eponymous founder of Reyneke Wines. His aptly named wine estate often reminds me of what the founding author of The Profile media company, Polina Marinova Pompliano, likes to say, “You are most powerful when your identity is tied to your own name.”
Reyneke began sharing his exciting story by telling me, “I’m fifty-two years old. I was born in Pretoria. I migrated southwest to Cape Town with my family when I was still a teenage boy. My parents wanted to pursue greener pastures, and also enjoy a coastal lifestyle. My father was a university lecturer and a part-time farmer. My mother was a nurse. After matriculating from high school, I attended the University of Stellenbosch. After completing my B.A. degree, I registered for a master’s degree in philosophy. Unfortunately, I never completed. But, I plan to do so soon,” he said.
“Those bygone days, I was a Rastafarian with long dreadlocks. But, when I tried to find temporary work to supplement my pocket money, to my surprise, I struggled. Probably, my rebellious white Rastafarian look did not fit the standard corporate image of Stellenbosch’s hotel, restaurant, and catering industry, where I was trying to find part-time work,” he said light-heartedly.
“That’s when I decided to pause my studies, and became a lowly paid farmworker. That, my friend, was the beginning of my life journey into agroecological farming, and biodynamic wine production, more specifically.”
According to Demeter, the world’s foremost Biodynamic® certifying agency, biodynamic agriculture is “a philosophy and methodology that views a farm as a self-sustaining ecosystem entirely responsible for creating, and maintaining its individual health, and vitality without any external and unnatural additions. It is one of the most sustainable forms of agriculture, creating healthier food for healthier people, and a healthier planet.”
Biodynamic agriculture owes its origins to the pioneering work of the 20th-century Austrian scientist, Dr. Rudolf Steiner. Upon realizing the damage that off-the-farm chemical fertilizers were causing to nature, and the hardship that European farmers were experiencing as a result, Rudolf Steiner began encouraging the farmers to re-imagine “the farm as a living organism.” As Reyneke himself said, “biodynamic wine, and by extension agroecological approach to wine production isn’t only about farming. It is also about caring for the nature and the people.”
I first met Reyneke almost a decade ago at an impromptu meeting of interested parties to discuss mainstreaming grass-fed beef amongst Cape Town’s growing sustainable food community. He arrived at our meeting place —Starlings Restaurant in the Cape Town suburb of Claremont — bearing a small gift for Trish, the restaurant’s owner and host of our meeting. The gift was a small box of different bottles of wine; each bearing a beautiful beige label with a small oxblood red “r” on it.
When I asked him about the significance of the small red “r,” he told me it was the first letter of his surname. With the hindsight of the intervening decade since our first encounter, I would boldly add (with Reyneke’s permission of course) that more than his surname, the small red “r” also symbolizes the “regenerative, restorative and resilient” philosophy of his wine brand.
We re-connected again in February 2021. I visited his wine farm on the eastern slopes of Polkadraai, fifteen minutes west of Stellenbosch’s town centre.
Reyneke is a mild-mannered and laid-back character. But behind that character “is a man driven by his singular commitment to nature, people and ethics, in that order,” he told me. “Our guiding principles are built around these three issues. These principles are neither peripheral nor tangential to our business agenda. They are an integral part of our business model. That’s why we are in the biodynamic wine business.”
“To introduce you to our biodynamic practices, these vineyards, where we are standing, were sprayed with the vital and healing biodynamic preparations: a mixture of water, horn manure, horn silica and horsetail tea,” he said confidently. “That was at a time when the mere mention of the words ‘biodynamic farming’ was instantly associated with some kind of witchcraft in South Africa.” I guessed that the ‘biodynamic preparations’ part is the perceived ‘witchcraft’ aspect of his biodynamic farming.
“We produce wine,” he said, “with great taste, the rights of nature, and social justice for our employees in mind. Hence, from the onset, I committed to put my unwavering commitment to agroecological farming, excellent taste, social equity, environmental wellbeing, and resilience into every drop of wine we produce and bottle.”
“When I was still a farmworker, I witnessed firsthand how the South African wine industry was held captive by the chemical inputs industry, through a hollow and deceptive grape wine production philosophy, which relied on farming with expensive off-the-farm inputs — including nature destroying synthetic chemicals — and worker exploitation. I wanted to buck this trend and create something that did not previously exist in the global wine industry: biodynamic wine without herbicides and pesticides. That’s why these chemicals are strictly forbidden in my farm and our vineyards.”
“Here, at Reyneke Wines, we strictly adhere to our Demeter certification. We simply use wine grapes, craftsmanship and lots of patience, as nature intended wine to be made. To abide by the standard for organic wine, some sulphur is added to preserve the final product. We use biodynamic preparations, fortified organic compost, natural fertilizer, and nitrogen from our herd of Nguni cattle to increase our soil fertility. We also use a raft of ducks to control snails in the vineyards. These are the many ways in which Reyneke Cornerstone is a living testimony that all wines aren’t created equal,” Reyneke explained.
Reyneke is a fearless man. “One day,” he said, “a professor from the Department of Viticulture and Oenology at the University of Stellenbosch drove up here to warn me that I was putting the local wine industry at risk by not spraying the grapes. I gracefully thanked him for the unsolicited advice and sent him on his way back to the university.”
Working on the farm provided Reyneke with many other key perspectives and insights about his mission to protect nature, people, and ethics.
Quoting Indian philosopher, Amartya Sen, who said, “true empowerment is about the capability to choose for oneself,” Reyneke told me, “we asked our workers what they’d choose for their lives. Their simple reply was home ownership and education for their children. That gave rise and impetus to our Cornerstone Project, a wine portfolio designed to provide our workers with an equitable share of the business. Also, studying philosophy and environmental ethics motivated me to pursue ethical approaches to doing business. This matters because it guarantees equity for our workers,” he said.
When I asked him for his formula to build a strong, diverse, and inclusive organizational culture, he said, “One must respect people and be grateful for their contributions to the greater good of the business.”According the wine estate’s website, “In addition to housing and education, retirement annuities and funeral policies have also been added to the pay structure of all permanent employees. This adds to the Cornerstone Project’s longer-term objectives with an emphasis on poverty alleviation, education and financial independence for all farm and winery workers.”
“Just like product differentiation, ethics is part of our value proposition. Against considerable odds, it looks like we are succeeding in our mission to defy the impossible,” he said. “What began as some kind of witchcraft has now turned into a global wine brand powered by nature, people. and ethical truth-based marketing. We owe our success to our business ethics.”
“I founded Reyneke Wines to disrupt the status quo. I think the fact that wines from our Cornerstone Project have become the toast of life of our health and sustainability customers, from Chicago to Copenhagen is strong evidence that we are making good inroads in the hotel, restaurant, and catering sector of the food service industry around the world. The raving and complimentary reviews from the Platter’s by Diners Club and the Robert Parker Green Emblem are also helping a great deal.”
“The two other ways in which I think we are acting with courage is our preparedness to be imaginative and innovative. We are always thinkering (thinking creative and discovering new things through doing (tinkering). We are also great fans of sisu, (a Finnish concept for courage, strength of will, determination, perseverance, and acting rationally in the face of adversity).”
“Reyneke Cornerstone is our flagship wine. Unlike any commodity wine in the world, or in the Reyneke Wines portfolio for that matter, the Reyneke Cornerstone wine range is extraordinary, both in its formulation and its purpose. For starters, it is biodynamic,” Reyneke said.
“Upon his review of the Reyneke Cornerstone wine, Eedes said: “While organic farming is good in that it seeks to promote environmental sustainability as a goal, biodynamics goes a step further in treating the farm as an individuality that must be self-sustainable. Sustainability is therefore envisaged as being not just about the environment but having social and commercial dimensions too. That’s what our Cornerstone Project stands for: nature, people and ethical business.”
Perhaps, what I least expected to discover about Reyneke Cornerstone is wine that is altogether what the author of the classic The Nature of Economies, Jane Jacobs, likes to call “differentiation emerging from a generality;” a coded phrase for “something different and special emerging from something common and everywhere,” like commodity wine. “Reyneke Cornerstone doesn’t taste great because it is biodynamic. It also tastes great because it is produced with love, and goodness of the heart,” Reyneke told me. If biodynamic wine is Reyneke’s Northstar, then, I think that the Cornerstone Project is the energy that makes it shine brighter because it is about protecting the rights of nature and workers.
The wine industry is a very crowded space, both in South Africa and across the world. Competition for customers is very intense. To win requires a special kind of visionary leadership, creative thinking and willingness to try and discover new things through learning by doing. Here are some of my take-home messages from my engagements with Reyneke.
Until 2007, the South African wine industry had a long history of exploiting farmworkers and paying them with cheap wine of inferior quality called papsak or dop system, instead of money. From the onset, Reyneke Wines has been different. According to the workers who have been with the business since the beginning, they have always earned a living wage and are treated with the utmost respect. Based on the results of a "financial wellness" survey of his farm labour, Reyneke ended up establishing the flagship Cornerstone Project to benefit his employees. The result: the employer and his employees are all rising together.
Shared prosperity, social equity, environmental wellbeing, and resilience are the things we need to survive and thrive. With an abundance mindset, they are all within our reach. Through his abundance rather than scarcity mindset, Reyneke has been able to create an ethical wine business with a natural approach to development, and one that benefits his financial, social and ecological objectives.
Building a small and resilient business is very tough. More than anything else, it requires patience to achieve the objectives. By its very nature, a tortoise moves slowly. But its speed lies in its ability to compound many small steps into significant progress in the right direction. Individually, each step that Reyneke has taken may seem insignificant, but the compounded impact of his steps is immense. In a word, Reyneke has been like a fast tortoise with the determination to reach the destination, however long it takes.
“Nothing changes until someone somewhere starts acting differently,” Alan M. Webber wrote in his book, Rules of Thumb. By acting differently, making informed choices, and taking timely actions, Reyneke has created an agroecology-inspired niche business that has changed the global wine market forever.
Mpumelelo Ncwadi (ncwadi@wisc.edu) is a PhD student at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin—Madison. You can visit Reyneke Wines on www.reynekewines.co.za
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