Greg Sherwood MW: Wine, giving and the Pebbles Project

Over the years, I have read a lot of periodical analyses and critiques about how the South African wine industry is not doing enough when it comes to helping the disadvantaged communities it relies so heavily upon to operate as a successful industry. Some of it may be fact, some of it fiction, but whenever I am spending longer periods of time in the Cape winelands, I am always curious and enquiring as to what specific projects are successfully operating in the winelands and making a real impact on real peoples’ lives.

On my recent trip to the Cape, I managed to not only spend a week in Stellenbosch judging but also spent an extended time in both Franschhoek and Hemel-en-Aarde. Knowing full well that my time in and around Hermanus would be pulled in a number of directions, I contacted Carolyn Martin of Creation and enquired if there would be any opportunity to do a charity wine dinner for consumers to help raise funds for a local charity.

Carolyn, being the indomitable force that she is, thought it would be a great idea to get some of the local wineries involved in a fine wine dinner to help raise funds for their local branch of Pebbles Project, a charity I had encountered many times before through the very generous fundraising work of ex-Mullineux Wines shareholder Keith Prothero in London, as well as during my time as the Cape Wine Auction’s UK Charity Ambassador, Pebbles Project being a significant beneficiary of the funds raised annually.

Wine farms and social impact

To be honest, I primarily thought that the Pebbles Project was mostly active in and around Stellenbosch but was pleasantly surprised to see how its incredible network had grown to cover great swathes of the Cape’s winelands. The Pebbles Project is a South African non-profit founded in 2004 that works to improve the lives of children and families in the country’s agricultural communities, many of whom are the sons, daughters, and relatives of wine farm workers.

Operating across Somerset West, Stellenbosch, Paarl, Wellington, Citrusdal, and the Hemel-en-Aarde region near Hermanus, Pebbles, as I learnt, currently supports over 1,400 children between the ages of 0 and 18, alongside their families. Its work follows a five-pillar approach covering education, health, nutrition, community development, and child protection through social work programmes, addressing challenges such as poverty, alcohol abuse, and limited access to basic services that are common in farming communities.

As it turns out, one of the organisation’s most notable initiatives happens to be in the Hemel-en-Aarde outside Hermanus. In 2015, Carolyn Martin, co-owner of Creation Wines, approached the Pebbles Project to develop educational facilities for farming families in the Valley.  A local farm owner made available a 10-hectare piece of land, and seed funding from the Cape Wine Auction Trust enabled the opening of an Early Childhood Development and After-School Club centre in 2016. 

The project has since grown substantially: a Rotary Global grant in 2019 funded two additional classrooms, and by 2020 the centre had grown from 62 to 113 learners. Carolyn then explained that when a neighbouring government school closed in 2019 leaving 34 farm children without placements, Pebbles partnered with several donors to open the Pebbles Academy, accommodating learners from Grade 1 to 9. A skills development centre was later added, converting an old onion shed into a facility for 20 young adult learners, in partnership with the Hermanus Rotary Club and international donors.

This is exactly the kind of model that illustrates the strength of cooperation between local wineries and the Pebbles Project, with wine estates providing land, funding, and advocacy, while Pebbles delivers the on-the-ground infrastructure and expertise, together transforming opportunities for generations of farming families. It is projects like this and many others that I believe are simply not talked about enough, with even affluent locals often unaware of the tireless work going on in the background and the ongoing funding demands.

So, on a crisp but very muddy Friday morning, after a long-awaited overnight Walker Bay downpour, I set off with Carolyn to visit the Pebbles Academy in the Valley. Carolyn said we would need at least an hour or so on site, which initially seemed quite long to me. But it was only when I got to the Pebbles Academy and saw its true extent, that I realised what a large and groundbreaking undertaking it really was.

As things turned out, we were there a lot longer than an hour and speaking to all the incredible teachers and children was truly inspiring. The profound effect the opportunities offered by the Academy are having on the children was clear to see. Young lives being changed, improved and enhanced through educational opportunities, a healthy routine and an all-important ‘safe space’ respite away from some of the starker realities of a hard rural upbringing.

A dinner that raised more than R50,000

Heading to the sell-out wine tasting dinner in Hermanus that evening at the Fisherman’s Cottage restaurant, which I was presenting alongside Cape Wine Master Liezl Richards, took on a whole new significance. Beyond the interest and consumer support drummed up by Carolyn Martin, a special mention needs to go to the incredibly generous wineries that provided some sensational wines on the night: Creation, Newton Johnson, Restless River, Crystallum and Thamnus.

Flight one featured four Chardonnays including Thamnus Chardonnay 2023, an embryonically youthful and vibrant wine with more opulent high-tone fruit notes of fresh green honeydew melon, green apple, white pear, and a stony mineral limestone complexity. This was served alongside the excellent Newton Johnson Family Vineyards Chardonnay 2024, sourced from multiple vineyards to reflect the estate in its entirety, showing pear, peach, citrus, and vanilla notes, the palate poised and elegant.

The second pairing featured another blockbuster duo, with Restless River’s incredible Ava Marie Chardonnay 2023 brimming with tension and struck flint minerality along side notes of lemon and herbs, lemon cordial and white peach notes that intermingled with the fabulous stony mineral nuances. This was served with Creation’s top white offering, the Art of Chardonnay 2024, a steely, crystalline expression with incredible tension and focus, wound spring energy and a lemon and lime persistence of note. 2024 is a seriously good vintage in the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley, despite being a very small harvest.

With three food courses appearing alongside the wine pairings, the first two reds were every bit as exciting as the Chardonnays. The Thamnus Pinot Noir 2022 was layered with sour red plum, black berry, curry leaf and bruised ripe strawberry fruits, the palate imparting a fullness and ripeness with a feel of density and dry extract. The Newton Johnson Family Vineyards Pinot Noir 2024 is also a serious vintage offering, rating an impressive 95/100 from Winemag’s editor, and showing lashings of strawberry, red and black cherry, pink musk and fynbos spice with a rich, succulent palate.

The final red pairing to round out the evening was the always impressive Crystallum Cuvee Cinema Pinot Noir 2024, shining bright with incredibly pure, finessed, supple red and black bramble berry fruits and a pinpoint focus on the palate, served alongside Creation’s beautiful Art of Pinot Noir 2024 flagship red. The aromatics showed incredible intensity with piercing notes of black cherry, black berry and wild strawberry, the palate fruit tempered by a fresh, pure stony minerality and a superb fine-grained texture.

A big thank you has to go to all the wonderful Hermanus residents who supported this Pebbles Project charity dinner so generously, with a notable R1,000 of every ticket sold going directly into the charity’s coffers. Adding to that the funds from two silent auctions of mixed wine rarity cases from the above wineries as well as a generous magnum of Pinot Noir donated by Anthony Hamilton Russell, the evening helped raise well over R50,000.

I cannot take any credit for the hard work in putting the whole evening together, merely for floating the original idea and letting other people run with it, but I was certainly very thankful to have had Carolyn and JC Martin’s generous time and energy as well as the able support of Liezl Richards CWM to help present all the wines on the night. As is so often the case, giving can be so much more rewarding than receiving.

If you would like to donate or assist The Pebbles Project in any way, they can be contacted at: www.pebblesproject.org

• Greg Sherwood was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and as the son of a career diplomat, spent his first 21 years traveling the globe with his parents. With a Business Management and Marketing degree from Webster University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA, Sherwood began his working career as a commodity trader. In 2000, he decided to make more of a long-held interest in wine taking a position at Handford Wines in South Kensington, London, working his way up to the position of Senior Wine Buyer over 22 years. Sherwood currently consults to a number of top fine wine merchants in London while always keeping one eye firmly on the South African wine industry. He qualified as the 303rd Master of Wine in 2007.