When we started Wasted Wine Club, we were never sure where our first wines were going to come from. Our hunch was always South Africa because of our strong ties and contacts there, but when the time came, and the opportunity arose to collaborate with Alex McFarlane of McFarlane Wines in the Hemel en Aarde, we knew the stars had aligned. Our founder Angelo van Dyk sat down with her for a chat and a deep dive into all things sustainability.

Angelo van Dyk: Can you tell us where you are currently based?

Alexandra McFarlane: I live in Onrus, South Africa, a little village on the coast next to Hermanus, and I make my wines in the Hemel en Aarde.

AVD: What does sustainable agriculture look like for you, and what do you think it will look like in the future?

AM: I’m glad you asked this question, because I think the new generation of wine drinkers are looking at all things organic as some kind of perfect way of managing vineyards and land, and after having worked for a supplier of organic agricultural products, I realise it’s a lot more complex than that. While I do think that there are some invaluable principles applied to organic farming, there are big costs when it comes to the certifications, as well as the costs of putting these systems in place, that the average consumer doesn’t really know about or understand. The actual cost of receiving certification, and the audits one needs to undergo, is huge. The other problem that I have with certified organic viticulture is that there is a lot of red tape. I love structure and red tape. I function better with boxes and parameters, but I think when we talk about sustainable agriculture, we are just thinking about the impact on the environment, as opposed to considering sustainability as a holistic idea, especially when it comes to a farmer’s business. One aspect often overlooked is financial sustainability. I think we need to be talking to the consumer more, so that we can open their minds to this. For example, in the instance where you have abnormal amounts of rainfall in an area, what you are allowed to use in a certified organic spray program is not always (and I am not saying always, this is often more in the extreme circumstances) going to give the farmer the best coverage. There are very clever and soft chemicals that might not necessarily fall into the organic realm, but which are very well made and designed that can help to keep the crop safe for the farmer so that there is less loss. I think the loss of crop and the loss of quality is part of looking at sustainability.

If you are a winemaker like myself, I can’t be expected to pay exorbitant amounts for the grapes just because they are organic, but then isn’t clean. I think there needs to be some kind of middle ground. I’d always prefer it if my farmers were working in a softer way, but if they really needed to lean on something like a systemic fungicide, and there is something with a soft, low impact, they should use it. I’d prefer it if they used that product once in the season, and then have that translate to exceptional quality fruit. Versus losing 30% of the crop, or having to incur the cost of my labour needed to sort through and remove 30% of the crop, just so that it can enable me to do what I need to do in the cellar. When I am spending money on fruit, I want to honour what comes in, and not have to do too much to that in the winery. So I think in terms of what it means to me, there are more dynamic solutions needed to just having something certified organic. 

And then I think for the future, there are a lot of dogmatic people who say that wines need to be certified organic otherwise they won’t drink them, and I think that we actually need to understand a lot more about where the grapes are coming from and what the holistic view of the farmer is. I’m not interested in rows that have been sprayed full surface and have zero biodiversity, but I am also not only going to buy organic fruit just because it’s organic certified. The problem that we also need to address with organic fruit is how much copper is sprayed. Perhaps it’s something that we need to delve into more together in the future, as it’s a good discussion to have. There is a good example of a very well-known South African winery who bought a neighbouring farm on the Simonsberg mountain. This farm has been certified organic for about 15 years, and they have sprayed copper sulphate every single spring since its inception. They had never had their soils tested, but they had such high levels of toxicity that the quality of the soil is totally f*cked. Copper is hugely damaging. It’s a fungicide. If you get that in your soil, there is no where for it to go. Rehabilitation of that land is going to tens to hundreds of years. Through trying to be organic in their branding, they have immeasurably f*cked up their soil and the environment so badly that it is just not salvageable. That is also for me so wrong on so many levels. There are definitely some extremes, and we need to look at things differently.

In the future, especially with global climate change, I do think that more people are going to have to look at what they are spraying. I think the EU is leading the conversation surrounding what we are able to use, but I do hope that in the future, there is going to be more of a conversation that helps consumers to be better educated on what it means to grow something sustainably using our natural systems. Fundamentally, we are farming something. You can plant and increase all types of biodiversity, but as soon as you plant things in rows, you have a monocrop, there is no way around it. That changes things significantly. That means your disease pressure is always going to be higher, and that’s where the principles of increasing biodiversity to combat disease comes in, but you will still have that monoculture in that area. In the future, I hope it becomes more of a conversation. We have so much information at our fingertips, and wine connects people after all, so we can tell our stories and learn from each other and tell the consumers about what we are doing.

AVD: What do you foresee being some of the challenges that we’ll be facing in the coming years surrounding wine production?

AM: Looking at South Africa specifically, it’s something that I have been trying not to think about for the last 12 months, because it absolutely petrifies me to my core. Especially because, like yourself, we are a small business that is trying to get off the ground. I think the biggest challenges are the rapid rise in production costs. A lot of that I think is linked to inflation and pressure from our load shedding schedules, and what that means for all of the other goods that are impacted by loss of electricity. Suppliers are having to move to solar solutions and other energy alternatives, and there is the very real increase in the cost of fuel. The Rand is weakening, our government is f*cking up this country, and people are simply not investing in South Africa anymore. Our weakening Rand means that it is getting more expensive to do all these things, and that translates into us having to put our prices up. The local consumer doesn't always understand why, but the international consumer understands it even less, because they don't have the same high inflation rates that we have. I think that is going to be a massive challenge for us to continue to produce wine that is at similar price points to previous years. I don't have a problem going back to more basic, manual wine making methods, like using gravity, or using basket presses, all of those things that require a bit more manpower but less electricity and capital. Unfortunately, because we're renting space, we're kind of at the mercy of the equipment that we have access to, and until we can build our own space, we're going to be sitting in the dark for half of harvest, and trying desperately to get the rest of the production through the doors and into the bottle with half the amount of time with the power on that we previously had.

I don't know what that translates to in terms of staying afloat as a business. I think it's even harder for the grape growers because their costs go up, but they don't feel like they can put their prices up. I don't know if that means vineyards will not be looked after as well, despite us wanting to pay the grower more, but maybe we end up losing more grapes and area under vine.

I also think with climate change, one of the big things that we stick our heads in the sand about is water. I think we are on the verge of another drought in the Western Cape very shortly. Yes, our dams might be full for the next two winters if we have had enough rain this year, but if we don't continue to have good rains in winter, our groundwater and what our vines can handle if they've been irrigated all their lives, is going to impact the industry massively.  I think it's going to impact not only yields, but I think it's going to impact fruit quality as well.

AVD: Do you think the wine industry can contribute to and impact how we approach the idea of sustainability?

AM: This is a really, really good question. I think the wine industry is one that has the closest points of contact with the consumer in an agricultural context, other than those farmers who are selling their produce direct to the end customer at a market in South Africa. We don't have a huge culture of that here though. I mean, we have a couple of markets, but there is a very small amount of people that actually go and buy vegetables there. It obviously doesn’t have the same convenience factor of supermarkets, so it’s used less.

Because the wine industry is so connected to our consumer, and our story and our information is all over social media and our websites, we can have a huge impact at educating how people think about sustainability. Having the discussions and the debates, and letting people understand the processes around what it takes to grow grapes, has a wider impact on the conversation surrounding agriculture because there is a lot of synergy with grapes and other agricultural produce.  We just happen to take a raw material, and turn it to something in another step in the farming process.

So yeah, I think we can make a big difference. Most importantly, the platforms for how we tell the stories and how we connect to the consumer needs to trickle down into the restaurants and wine shops, as it doesn't help that we say all these things, but then the story doesn’t get passed on.

AVD: It’s Friday night, what glass of wine are you sinking into? And what music are you listening to?

AM: I think my ideal wine at the moment that I just can't get enough of, whether it's hot or cold, is Marelise’s Momento Swartland Grenache. It is f*cking insane. That wine is just absolutely fantastic. I can't get enough of it. So yeah, that would probably be my answer right now. It would be that and multiple glasses because it is just so damn delicious. And I’d probably be listening to some Johnny Cash.

Alex McFarlane is the co-founder and winemaker for McFarlane Wines in Hemel en Aarde, South Africa. She works with heritage varieties mostly, grapes that have a historical significance in a South African context, and is hugely passionate about creating a sustainable and consistent idea of agriculture and wine production.

Angelo van Dyk: Can you tell us where you are currently based?

Alexandra McFarlane: I live in Onrus, South Africa, a little village on the coast next to Hermanus, and I make my wines in the Hemel en Aarde.

AVD: What does sustainable agriculture look like for you, and what do you think it will look like in the future?

AM: I’m glad you asked this question, because I think the new generation of wine drinkers are looking at all things organic as some kind of perfect way of managing vineyards and land, and after having worked for a supplier of organic agricultural products, I realise it’s a lot more complex than that. While I do think that there are some invaluable principles applied to organic farming, there are big costs when it comes to the certifications, as well as the costs of putting these systems in place, that the average consumer doesn’t really know about or understand. The actual cost of receiving certification, and the audits one needs to undergo, is huge. The other problem that I have with certified organic viticulture is that there is a lot of red tape. I love structure and red tape. I function better with boxes and parameters, but I think when we talk about sustainable agriculture, we are just thinking about the impact on the environment, as opposed to considering sustainability as a holistic idea, especially when it comes to a farmer’s business. One aspect often overlooked is financial sustainability. I think we need to be talking to the consumer more, so that we can open their minds to this. For example, in the instance where you have abnormal amounts of rainfall in an area, what you are allowed to use in a certified organic spray program is not always (and I am not saying always, this is often more in the extreme circumstances) going to give the farmer the best coverage. There are very clever and soft chemicals that might not necessarily fall into the organic realm, but which are very well made and designed that can help to keep the crop safe for the farmer so that there is less loss. I think the loss of crop and the loss of quality is part of looking at sustainability.

If you are a winemaker like myself, I can’t be expected to pay exorbitant amounts for the grapes just because they are organic, but then isn’t clean. I think there needs to be some kind of middle ground. I’d always prefer it if my farmers were working in a softer way, but if they really needed to lean on something like a systemic fungicide, and there is something with a soft, low impact, they should use it. I’d prefer it if they used that product once in the season, and then have that translate to exceptional quality fruit. Versus losing 30% of the crop, or having to incur the cost of my labour needed to sort through and remove 30% of the crop, just so that it can enable me to do what I need to do in the cellar. When I am spending money on fruit, I want to honour what comes in, and not have to do too much to that in the winery. So I think in terms of what it means to me, there are more dynamic solutions needed to just having something certified organic. 

And then I think for the future, there are a lot of dogmatic people who say that wines need to be certified organic otherwise they won’t drink them, and I think that we actually need to understand a lot more about where the grapes are coming from and what the holistic view of the farmer is. I’m not interested in rows that have been sprayed full surface and have zero biodiversity, but I am also not only going to buy organic fruit just because it’s organic certified. The problem that we also need to address with organic fruit is how much copper is sprayed. Perhaps it’s something that we need to delve into more together in the future, as it’s a good discussion to have. There is a good example of a very well-known South African winery who bought a neighbouring farm on the Simonsberg mountain. This farm has been certified organic for about 15 years, and they have sprayed copper sulphate every single spring since its inception. They had never had their soils tested, but they had such high levels of toxicity that the quality of the soil is totally f*cked. Copper is hugely damaging. It’s a fungicide. If you get that in your soil, there is no where for it to go. Rehabilitation of that land is going to tens to hundreds of years. Through trying to be organic in their branding, they have immeasurably f*cked up their soil and the environment so badly that it is just not salvageable. That is also for me so wrong on so many levels. There are definitely some extremes, and we need to look at things differently.

In the future, especially with global climate change, I do think that more people are going to have to look at what they are spraying. I think the EU is leading the conversation surrounding what we are able to use, but I do hope that in the future, there is going to be more of a conversation that helps consumers to be better educated on what it means to grow something sustainably using our natural systems. Fundamentally, we are farming something. You can plant and increase all types of biodiversity, but as soon as you plant things in rows, you have a monocrop, there is no way around it. That changes things significantly. That means your disease pressure is always going to be higher, and that’s where the principles of increasing biodiversity to combat disease comes in, but you will still have that monoculture in that area. In the future, I hope it becomes more of a conversation. We have so much information at our fingertips, and wine connects people after all, so we can tell our stories and learn from each other and tell the consumers about what we are doing.

AVD: What do you foresee being some of the challenges that we’ll be facing in the coming years surrounding wine production?

AM: Looking at South Africa specifically, it’s something that I have been trying not to think about for the last 12 months, because it absolutely petrifies me to my core. Especially because, like yourself, we are a small business that is trying to get off the ground. I think the biggest challenges are the rapid rise in production costs. A lot of that I think is linked to inflation and pressure from our load shedding schedules, and what that means for all of the other goods that are impacted by loss of electricity. Suppliers are having to move to solar solutions and other energy alternatives, and there is the very real increase in the cost of fuel. The Rand is weakening, our government is f*cking up this country, and people are simply not investing in South Africa anymore. Our weakening Rand means that it is getting more expensive to do all these things, and that translates into us having to put our prices up. The local consumer doesn't always understand why, but the international consumer understands it even less, because they don't have the same high inflation rates that we have. I think that is going to be a massive challenge for us to continue to produce wine that is at similar price points to previous years. I don't have a problem going back to more basic, manual wine making methods, like using gravity, or using basket presses, all of those things that require a bit more manpower but less electricity and capital. Unfortunately, because we're renting space, we're kind of at the mercy of the equipment that we have access to, and until we can build our own space, we're going to be sitting in the dark for half of harvest, and trying desperately to get the rest of the production through the doors and into the bottle with half the amount of time with the power on that we previously had.

I don't know what that translates to in terms of staying afloat as a business. I think it's even harder for the grape growers because their costs go up, but they don't feel like they can put their prices up. I don't know if that means vineyards will not be looked after as well, despite us wanting to pay the grower more, but maybe we end up losing more grapes and area under vine.

I also think with climate change, one of the big things that we stick our heads in the sand about is water. I think we are on the verge of another drought in the Western Cape very shortly. Yes, our dams might be full for the next two winters if we have had enough rain this year, but if we don't continue to have good rains in winter, our groundwater and what our vines can handle if they've been irrigated all their lives, is going to impact the industry massively.  I think it's going to impact not only yields, but I think it's going to impact fruit quality as well.

AVD: Do you think the wine industry can contribute to and impact how we approach the idea of sustainability?

AM: This is a really, really good question. I think the wine industry is one that has the closest points of contact with the consumer in an agricultural context, other than those farmers who are selling their produce direct to the end customer at a market in South Africa. We don't have a huge culture of that here though. I mean, we have a couple of markets, but there is a very small amount of people that actually go and buy vegetables there. It obviously doesn’t have the same convenience factor of supermarkets, so it’s used less.

Because the wine industry is so connected to our consumer, and our story and our information is all over social media and our websites, we can have a huge impact at educating how people think about sustainability. Having the discussions and the debates, and letting people understand the processes around what it takes to grow grapes, has a wider impact on the conversation surrounding agriculture because there is a lot of synergy with grapes and other agricultural produce.  We just happen to take a raw material, and turn it to something in another step in the farming process.

So yeah, I think we can make a big difference. Most importantly, the platforms for how we tell the stories and how we connect to the consumer needs to trickle down into the restaurants and wine shops, as it doesn't help that we say all these things, but then the story doesn’t get passed on.

AVD: It’s Friday night, what glass of wine are you sinking into? And what music are you listening to?

AM: I think my ideal wine at the moment that I just can't get enough of, whether it's hot or cold, is Marelise’s Momento Swartland Grenache. It is f*cking insane. That wine is just absolutely fantastic. I can't get enough of it. So yeah, that would probably be my answer right now. It would be that and multiple glasses because it is just so damn delicious. And I’d probably be listening to some Johnny Cash.

Alex McFarlane is the co-founder and winemaker for McFarlane Wines in Hemel en Aarde, South Africa. She works with heritage varieties mostly, grapes that have a historical significance in a South African context, and is hugely passionate about creating a sustainable and consistent idea of agriculture and wine production.