February 2000
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Going organic, getting the soil ready Please double click on images to enlarge A new survey was done of all the soil types on the farm and a hugely detailed map drawn with contour lines, water courses, drains etc. We were only planting 4 hectares this winter but each sprinkler head, each vine (of the 12,000 to be planted) and each irrigation pipe would have to be marked out. We chose our 4 blocks and drew up the plans.
To achieve the correct soil PH, lime and an organic mineral supplement was
applied after a full We had decided at an early stage to see if we could grow grapes to international organic standards. We weren't going to make a great song and dance about this but just for our own consciences and anyway we thought that most wine drinkers would be asking for or expecting an organically produced product by the time our wine hit the shelves.
We had set a budget for the vineyard development based on a similar project run the previous year by a friend of ours. Well, we can tell you that inflation is running at 10-15% in the wine industry! Manie Maritz, our farm manager, was away the day they spread the lime and as a result we can tell you that acidity won't be a problem in our soils! The bills started rolling in. We thought a visit to our money man was in order..... This first ever meeting with our accountant Christian de Wet was an eye opener. We were unused to the habits of South Africans and were probably over sensitive to small patterns of behaviour that we perceived. The first trips out to SA had been made by us male directors unaccompanied by either Mrs G-W or Mrs M. On our first "accompanied" trip we started to notice a few little patterns developing. Was it our imagination that whenever we ordered in cafes, bars and restaurants, it was always the men who were served first? In business meetings when the cards were handed out the girls weren't offered any, even though for all our business acquaintances knew the girls could have been the bosses. The fact is that they are at least 50/50 in this venture because we'll all be penniless if it goes down the tubes, official directorships or not. It was a good wind up for the girls anyway and every time it happened we teased them about it, building up their paranoia. Mr. De Wet had been recommended to us as the best farm accountant in the Boland, and so he is, being used to dealing with the tough wine and stock farmers and the even tougher tax authorities. We met him in his spartan office in the local market town. He took a long look at us all and then introduced himself to John and myself, turned to Mrs. G-W and, without any introduction, asked her "Which of these two do you belong to?" I am sure it was meant as a tease but I could see that after all the other teasing she was beginning to get seriously paranoid. We just hoped he wasn't going to say to her "Be a good girl now and pop out and fetch us a couple of cold ones while we talk business." He spotted us for Anglo Saxon do-gooding liberals when we mentioned a workers trust, and he closed the meeting with the sort of joke you don't really know whether to laugh at. Surely the punch line wasn't really so tasteless - we must have misheard or something - or was it another wind up to test us? Copyright © 2000 Tulbagh Solutions. All rights reserved.
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