Today’s young wine enthusiasts may have all but forgotten the well-worn adage that “wine is made in the vineyard.” Alongside a heavy-footed Shiraz, the excessive use of new oak, and the hackneyed prescriptions on pairing wine with specific dishes, this saying is relegated to those of us whose vinous journey began decades past. For the incontestable truth, after nearly thirty years in the wine industry, is that the human touch, the individual’s influence, perhaps plays a more crucial role in the vineyard’s joyful product than do clay soils and elevated slopes caressed by salty ocean breezes. Here, two levels of human involvement come into play.

First, there is the understanding of soil, climate, and the vineyard, which leads to the planting of grapes fit to express the divine offerings of those natural qualities. Coupled with this is, naturally, the expert application of intellect, skill, and labour to set the grapes on the magical trajectory where sweet fruit transmutes into compelling, soul-lifting wine. This blend of human intuition, science, and intellect remains, for me, nothing short of a miracle each time a complex yet vibrant Chardonnay is tasted. Or a full-bodied Cabernet Sauvignon, whose overwhelming sensorial palette is crafted through adept human-minded use of oak and expert timing during its creation.

As someone involved in the writing and marketing side of wine due to various practical restrictions that kept myself from becoming a winemaker, there is a second aspect of the human role in wine that fascinates me just as much as today’s young winemakers’ talents. It is those pivotal moments when they decided to dedicate their lives to tending the vineyard and crafting wine. Where, I so often wonder, lies that initial spark, the epiphany that led them to devote their adult years to living with wine and vineyard, making it their livelihood?

Surely, this decision is somewhat more evident for those with roots in a family vineyard. Though not always guaranteed, the choice to make wine is cultivated from childhood. When the young person becomes involved in the family winery, the seed is already sown and has sprouted, coupled with practical experiences and references that began in their formative years.

Yet, many are those for whom wine and winemaking become a calling, a deviation from the life path envisioned by themselves and their parents. Danielle le Roux, winemaker at Rust and Vrede in Stellenbosch, comes from a farm, albeit in the grain lands of the Overberg. An inherent love for plants and the outdoors led her to study forestry in Stellenbosch, with no true understanding, experience, or knowledge of wine. “So, during my student years, I started tasting wine with friends, and one day I was struck by a Merlot from Hartenberg,” she recounts. “The sheer beauty, the velvety softness and the berry aromas of this wine were overwhelming. Somewhere a light went on.” The illumination was bright enough to lead Danielle away from the trees and into the realm of vineyards and cellars.

My friend Emul Ross of Hamilton Russell Vineyards in Hemel-en-Aarde hails from a doctor’s home in the Northern Suburbs of Cape Town, with a father who was an avid sailor. At the age of 14, Emul found himself with his father on the open sea near Dassen Island, the wind propelling the yacht’s sails.

When his father opened a bottle of Boschendal Chardonnay to cleanse the salt from their mouths, young Emul had a taste. “At that moment, with the open sea before you, the wind against your body and the sun blazing, the encounter with the cool Chardonnay awakened something within me,” Emul recalls. “From that day, I never looked at one of my father’s bottles or glasses of wine without wondering where something so beautiful came from and how it was made.” Thus began his journey to embrace the craft of winemaking.

Every vocation requires a degree of dedicated commitment and, to use another cliché, passion. But the call of the vineyard and the cellar often awakens at unexpected times, drawing individuals who perhaps were not born to the wine path, yet are captivated by this world through a magical force. Just as wine delights people of all convictions and from all lifeworlds, blessing their lives with enjoyment and cultural fascination, so the power to draw individuals into its creation, to propagate its beauty and continuation, remains one of its greatest virtues. Thus, wine endures, brought to life by those entrusted with its pulse, ensuring it remains one of civilisation’s greatest blessings.

Keep the call calling.