{"id":503548,"date":"2026-06-21T06:11:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T06:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/503548\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T06:11:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T06:11:08","slug":"how-covid-lockdown-helped-make-an-award-winning-winemaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/503548\/","title":{"rendered":"How COVID lockdown helped make an award-winning winemaker"},"content":{"rendered":"

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) \u2014 Like millions of others, Natasha Jacka went stir-crazy during a COVID-19<\/a> lockdown in 2020, until it dawned on her that there might be great opportunity in having nowhere to go.<\/p>\n

Jacka used the pandemic<\/a> and the suspension of her studies at an agricultural college to plant her own vineyard at her family home in South Africa<\/a>. It was a way to fast forward her dream of becoming a winemaker by bringing it, literally, within reach.<\/p>\n

Nothing in the wine world<\/a> moves too fast, though, and it was four years before the first harvest and vintage. <\/p>\n

Jacka\u2019s debut wines from grapevines she planted, cared for and harvested in the yard of her parents\u2019 sea-facing home in Cape Town<\/a> \u2014 also stomping the grapes herself \u2014 were greeted with high praise by critics.<\/p>\n

What a relief, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt could have been so much work and if it doesn\u2019t deliver, you know, then you just feel … I can\u2019t imagine how I\u2019d feel,\u201d Jacka said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t looking at it like, oh this is going to make a fortune or anything like that. This is a labor of love.\u201d <\/p>\n

Christian Eedes, the editor of South Africa\u2019s respected online wine review publication winemag.co.za, said Jacka\u2019s project was \u201ca triumph of hope over good sense\u201d given how difficult it is to produce fine wine and turn a profit from such a small vineyard.<\/p>\n

Jacka squeezed 1,400 vines into two blocks in her parents\u2019 garden, which had at one time been part of a smallholding. One batch to produce a white blend, the other a syrah red wine varietal<\/a>. That\u2019s a tiny number considering regular wine farms usually have more than 50,000 vines.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s plenty of space in the world for craft and handmade,\u201d Eedes said. \u201cIt\u2019s the opposite of mass produced. It\u2019s made with thought and care and typically hard to come by.\u201d<\/p>\n

COVID struck at the height of Jacka\u2019s ambition. She was 27 and, tired of working for grumpy chefs, had left a job in the restaurant business to study viticulture at an agricultural college in the winemaking town of Stellenbosch, just outside Cape Town. <\/p>\n

She was following her passion and full of zest, she said, when the pandemic reduced her world to the boundaries of her parents\u2019 home in the Cape Town suburb of Noordhoek. Then, one day, she saw potential there.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI was actually looking out the window and I thought, imagine if there were vines here,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was a small spark.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was followed by conversations with her family to get their buy-in, and then a large amount of work. <\/p>\n

Jacka needed to clear the ground, procure more than 1,000 vines, and plant each one of them with a tall wooden stake to hold them. Her parents helped, though mom Sonia was soon banned from the planting process after putting one vine in upside down.<\/p>\n

There were also curious neighbors to reassure and an unexpected challenge to negotiate from a miniature horse called Spirit that the family keeps on the property. Spirit thought the vines were tasty.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe lost one or two vines,\u201d Jacka said. \u201cIt was hard to make it horse proof as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now 32 years old, Jacka\u2019s Noordhoek project has been the inspiration for a larger winemaking career. Her Alinea line of wines currently includes five others she\u2019s produced from grapes sourced from other parts of the region around Cape Town, which has a rich winemaking tradition. <\/p>\n

She\u2019s still looking forward to the next vintage from her vines in Noordhoek, though, as she continues to play the role of picker, stomper, labeller, sales rep, accountant and delivery truck driver there, she said with a laugh.<\/p>\n

Eedes, the wine critic who gave Jacka her first positive reviews, said he\u2019s still fascinated by the micro-vineyard that grew out of a COVID lockdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe managed to not be bored, like we all were,\u201d Eedes said. \u201cIt\u2019s really just an extraordinary undertaking.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP video journalist Neil Shaw contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) \u2014 Like millions of others, Natasha Jacka went stir-crazy during a COVID-19 lockdown…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1911,4386,114,76611,231458,1128,1130,146,122,85,46,231,231457,9517,126],"class_list":["post-503548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-africa","tag-agriculture","tag-business","tag-cape-town","tag-christian-eedes","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-entertainment","tag-general-news","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-lifestyle","tag-natasha-jacka","tag-south-africa","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}