The Solms-Delta Story
Professor Mark Solms left South Africa in the 1980s to pursue a research career in neuroscience. His main life’s work was determining how the brain generates dreams, and his landmark discovery of the forebrain mechanisms of dreaming resulted in his being named International Psychiatrist of the Year in 2000 by the American Psychiatric Association. Having achieved greatness in his field, he decided to pursue another sort of dream, and returned home from London to South Africa. Largely inspired by novelist André Brink who has written extensively about rural South Africa’s problematical and complex heritage, Solms decided to take on an archetypal Cape wine farm and turn it into an enterprise that would profit all involved.
The Partnership and its Fresh Approach to Transformation
In South Africa, while many attempts have been made to provide an equity stake for previously disadvantaged workers in wineries, few have been successful. When Mark Solms took over the Delta farm, he began by convincing the farm’s semi-feudal residents that his intentions to institute land reforms were genuine. In 2005, the Solms family established the Wijn de Caab Trust to benefit all the historically disadvantaged residents and other employees of the Solms-Delta wine estate. He then persuaded long-time friend, philanthropist Richard Astor, scion of a celebrated Anglo-American family, to buy the neighbouring farm, in order to increase the estate’s development capital. Solms and Astor, in an unprecedented move, then both put their farms up as collateral so that a third, adjoining farm could be purchased by their workers. The Wijn de Caab Trust, representing these 200 employees and residents, now has a 33% equity stake in Solms-Delta, and the profit from wine sales has been used to build and refurbish decent and comfortable homes for the workers, create recreational facilities, and provide a myriad of other social services (including private education and healthcare) that benefit all. Every employee now has an interest in making Solms-Delta a success.
Winemaking philosophy
Franschhoek terroir is ideal for Rhône varieties. The largely forgotten practice of desiccation, first perfected by the ancient Greeks, is also well-suited to these hot, dry and windy conditions, and the implementation of this ancient technique at Solms-Delta has set this winery apart from all other South African wine estates.
Desiccation explained
Four of the Solms wines contain varying quantities of desiccated grapes to create wines with different intensities and distinctive styles. Desiccation is achieved through strangulation, not simply allowing the grapes to dry on the vine. The stalks of the bunches of both red and white grapes are clamped on the vine before harvest, thus blocking the channels carrying various components to and from the berries. While up to 40% of the water evaporates, the natural acids and grape sugars are retained, concentrating flavours and colour but retaining balance.