There are many recognised careers in the world of wine – viticulturist, winemaker, marketing or sales manager, logistics or brand support. However, there are also quite specialised functions that wouldn’t appear on the average guidance teacher’s list of possible employment prospects. I’m not sure that any of the leading soil scientists I have met felt an overwhelming compulsion to pursue this particularly specialised field when they were at school. Some came to vineyard soils via geology, some via oenology.
Once the wine bug bites, however, it’s easy to get lost in the multidimensional world you discover is hiding in plain sight. Occasionally you see this in action: you go to a trade tasting and there are a couple of nerdy folk approaching the winemakers with questions that are only obliquely related to the commercial reality of the wine business. They might be geographers fascinated with the impact of climate on a particular vintage, or whole-wheaters who believe that grapes are the bellwether of a healthy farming environment.
Johan Reyneke is one such slightly unusual but entirely sane and well-grounded figure in the world of Cape wine. He came from a wine-farming family that owned property on the Polkadraai Hills of Stellenbosch. At university he studied philosophy. It was undoubtedly his intellectual curiosity with the philosophical method that had become second nature to him that led him to interrogate the way the vineyards were farmed.
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