Like millions confined to their homes during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, Natasha Jacka found herself restless. Yet, amidst the global standstill, an extraordinary opportunity began to take root in her mind: a vineyard.
With her agricultural college studies suspended, Jacka, then 27, seized the chance to fast-track her dream of becoming a winemaker. She transformed her family’s garden in Cape Town, South Africa, into a burgeoning vineyard, bringing her ambition literally within reach. The world of wine, however, moves at its own pace, and it would be four years before the first harvest and vintage.
Jacka’s debut wines, crafted from grapes she personally planted, nurtured, and harvested in her parents’ sea-facing home – even stomping them herself – were met with resounding praise from critics.
“It could have been so much work and if it doesn’t deliver, you know, then you just feel … I can’t imagine how I’d feel,” Jacka admitted, expressing her relief. “I wasn’t looking at it like, oh this is going to make a fortune or anything like that. This is a labor of love.”
Christian Eedes, editor of South Africa’s respected online wine review publication winemag.co.za, described Jacka’s project as “a triumph of hope over good sense.” He highlighted the immense difficulty in producing fine wine and turning a profit from such a minuscule vineyard.
Jacka managed to squeeze 1,400 vines into two blocks in her parents’ garden, a tiny number when compared to the 50,000-plus vines typically found on commercial wine farms. One batch was destined for a white blend, the other for a Syrah red.
“There’s plenty of space in the world for craft and handmade,” Eedes observed. “It’s the opposite of mass produced. It’s made with thought and care and typically hard to come by.”
The pandemic struck at the height of Jacka’s ambition. Tired of working for demanding chefs, she had left the restaurant business to study viticulture in Stellenbosch, a renowned winemaking town near Cape Town.
Full of passion, her world was suddenly confined to her parents’ home in the Noordhoek suburb. Then, one day, she spotted the potential. “I was actually looking out the window and I thought, imagine if there were vines here,” she recalled. “It was a small spark.”
This vision led to family discussions and a monumental amount of work. Jacka had to clear the ground, procure over a thousand vines, and plant each one with a tall wooden stake for support. Her parents lent a hand, though her mother, Sonia, was soon banned from planting after mistakenly putting a vine in upside down.
There were also curious neighbours to reassure and an unexpected challenge from Spirit, the family’s miniature horse, who found the young vines rather tasty. “We lost one or two vines,” Jacka said. “It was hard to make it horse proof as well.”
Now 32, Jacka’s Noordhoek project has blossomed into a broader winemaking career. Her Alinea line of wines now includes five others, produced from grapes sourced from other parts of the Cape Town region, an area rich in winemaking tradition.
She eagerly anticipates the next vintage from her Noordhoek vines, where she continues to play every role imaginable: picker, stomper, labeller, sales representative, accountant, and even delivery driver, she said with a laugh.
Eedes, the wine critic who first championed Jacka’s wines, remains fascinated by the micro-vineyard born out of a lockdown. “She managed to not be bored, like we all were,” Eedes concluded. “It’s really just an extraordinary undertaking.”
