Cry, the beloved winelands

• Floods in the Western Cape have left wine estates reeling

It’s been a brutal week in the Cape winelands, with torrential rainfall over the Heritage Day long weekend spawning some of the most frightening flood events in recent memory.

While the entire Cape Peninsula took a pounding, the worst hit areas appear to be Franschhoek, the Hemel-en-Aarde and Elgin valleys, and the regions surrounding the Breede River (Robertson and Bonnievale). Over and above the loss of life and the destruction of infrastructure (no bridges remain over the Onrus River), the damage to vineyards and orchards has been extensive.

More importantly, the communities who work in these places have been left without water, electricity, access to schools, work and food supplies. It will take a long time to restore basic comforts to many of these sites. Meanwhile, to make things even more difficult for those whose businesses are based on wine production, prospects for the 2024 harvest are looking grim.

Franschhoek, Hemel-enAarde (the valley which leads from Caledon down to Hermanus) as well as the coastline of Walker Bay to Stanford and Elgin took the first blow over the Sunday and Monday.

The flood plain of the Breede River, ordinarily a region so rain-deprived that agriculture there depends on the availability of irrigation water, had more time to prepare. Its impending calamity arrived — pretty much predictably — more than a day later: the rain that fell in its catchment area sent torrent upon torrent through gorges and along dry river beds until not even the poles supporting longestablished vineyards were visible.

Usually pictures tell more about devastation than words: catastrophe is the kind of thing under which language breaks. However, detail can be needed to give context to the immediately visible: sometimes the plain truth says it all.

From Creation’s Carolyn Martin at Hemel-en-Aarde

The loss of the Pebbles Bridge is catastrophic. Now 160 learners cannot reach the Pebbles school. This is a project which has changed lives. Asto, a grade 12 learner who lives on a neighbouring farm, is a perfect example: if she had not had access to Pebbles she would have dropped out of school in grade 7 when the local government farm school closed midyear and 75 children had no placements. Pebbles changed overnight from an early childhood development and aftercare centre to a fully fledged school with transport, nutritional, educational and healthcare included. This allowed Asto to complete grade 7 and get into high school. Asto is now part of a Maties programme and will study chartered accounting at Stellenbosch University in 2024.

From Nicky Wallace at Paul Wallace Wines in Elgin

We had 225mm within 36 hours on our farm — 20% of our typical annual rainfall. In anticipation of this deluge, we had opened the overflows to our dams two days prior. However, the ground was already saturated and the sheer volume of water was unlike anything we had ever witnessed before. It wasn’t long before it became apparent that both our dams were in trouble.

One, at our entrance, the lowest point of our farm, was receiving water from two different directions. Soon our plane trees were swimming and our driveway submerged. The dam wall started to erode (at one point I even saw a largemouth bass being swept over the wall).

We had to make the heartbreaking decision to call in the neighbour’s excavator to deliberately cut open the dam wall at a point less sensitive and, most likely, cheaper to repair, rather than lose the dam wall in its entirety. So we still have a dam, though no access to the farm. Still, our damage is not as devastating as many others’.

For now, it is simply too wet to be able to get into the vineyards (or orchards) to spray. Also with the farm roads so eroded it’s very difficult for the tractors to turn at the end of the rows. Spraying now is critical. The apple guys are saying that unless they can get a spray in now and have three clear days of sunshine, there may not be much of a crop.

The plight of the bees doesn’t bear thinking about. Thousands are spent on bringing in hives to pollinate all the fruit trees. I think a lot of blossoms have been battered off the trees and the bees have probably succumbed.

But while we are reeling, I feel grateful that we got off lightly compared to others. Our Elgin Railway Market and Peregrine farmstalls, which both have Wi-Fi, have been like unofficial disaster command centres, with farmers all scrabbling for excavators, drainage pipes, generators, pumps, etc.

I think the best way to help is to encourage people to support the wineries, just like they did in [the Covid-19] lockdown.

From Gordon Newton Johnson (Newton Johnson Wines) in Hemel-en-Aarde

I had been stuck on the western side of the Onrus River. The river took out every bridge and crossing in the valley as well as the road entrance (R320) into the valley from Hermanus. The power situation has stabilised, though the town of Hermanus will have no running water for the next two to three weeks. On the wine side, the only significant damage I’ve heard about from our neighbours has been a vineyard of Bartho Eksteen’s that was wiped out. It was planted above the 100-year flood line. Hamilton Russell had a huge gum tree crash through the middle of its warehouse.

For the moment, there is a lot of cleanup work. Our priority must be to open routes in and out of the valley. Hermanus has just cancelled the annual Whale Festival (due this weekend). We are desperately worried about attracting tourists to the valley for the upcoming December season, vital for all of us after the two lost Covid years.

Please urge the public to keep Hermanus and the Hemelen-Aarde in their December plans: it would be a great help.

From the De Wets at Excelsior

We regard all 90 employees, their extended families and kids as family. All of us reside on the estate. As a family in its entirety, we are in a good space.

Excelsior is downstream from Montagu. The Kogman’s Kloof River, which runs down from Montagu, is fed in Montagu by the convergence of two other tributaries, the Kinga and Keisie Rivers, which bottleneck through a stunningly beautiful gorge. As the Kogman’s heads south, it passes through Ashton, through the middle of Excelsior Wine Estate and into the Breede River (downstream from Springfield) — so what you have essentially is a Zandvliet-Excelsior-Dewetshof-Van Loveren line along which the water travels.

From Jenna Bruwer at Springfield

While we only received 78mm of rain, the extreme weather felt across the province and in our catchment areas meant rivers and dams burst their banks, causing widespread and severe flooding in our region — worse than that experienced just months before.

On Monday, with all other routes cut off or closed, Robertson was the last town reachable for all the long weekend travellers on their way back home to Cape Town. As a result hundreds of families sought shelter in churches, school halls and parking lots for the night. The community opened its doors and took in as many families as possible. It was amazing to see how our small town came together to help those in need.

The worst, however, was yet to come, with the Breede River and its tributaries coming down in full force on Tuesday, peaking at 4pm. All of them burst their banks, flooding most of our vineyards. Many are still completely submerged. There is nothing to do but wait for the water to subside and pray that the destruction is not too great.

Our vines are at a critical stage, having all started budding in the last month — these young shoots are tender and impossibly delicate. Our worry is that they will either have been washed off by the water, or broken off by the debris pummelling through, or that those which survive will be damaged once the cleanup begins.

From Kevin Grant at Ataraxia

My farm has endured a considerable landslide which originated in the upper reaches of our neighbours’ kloof. What was once pristine fynbos is now a field of boulders. Our present challenge is to open a path to get to one of our major chardonnay vineyards.

From Nathalia Storm of Storm Wines

It has been a chaotic week, we had lots of damage to our roads, but luckily we didn’t have any damage to our buildings or vineyard.

Hannes went to the cellar to check if everything was alright on the Sunday evening and then the rain really started. He made sure the cellar was open to facilitate drainage and made a few ditches to try and divert the water. However, the river washed away the road while he was there, leaving him trapped. I set out to fetch him but a huge tree blocked the way: it was one of the scariest nights of our lives.

From Phillip Retief at Van Loveren

We had some proper damage to pumps, buildings, road infrastructure and vineyards. Extraordinarily, this was the second major flood in less than three months, one testing the 100-year flood mark, the other coming a close second!

We evacuated our staff at Van Loveren on the eve of the flood. We also have a sluice system (on the winery doors) which we implemented after the 2003 floods, so we could utilise these for the first time since then.

The damage is significant, but that also is part of agriculture: many individuals are much worse off. Our silver lining is that the winery is “dry”!

From Paul Cluver in Elgin Most of our damage has been along the main river through the farm where it has washed away three bridges, roads, main pipeline infrastructure and flooded some apple orchards.

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The Cape wine industry is resilient, and has survived floods, fires, drought and lockdowns over the past five years. Every disaster is a test in itself, and mostly the survivors rise to the challenge.

For the communities scattered through the disaster areas the need is immediate and urgent. Learners without means to get to their schools, schools damaged beyond repair, books and study notes lost in the flooding, homes without roofs, shacks swept away, workplaces destroyed, so no household income for the family ... the litany is endless and the solutions are not immediately evident.

The Cape Wine Auction Trust, which has raised more than R130m in the decade or so since its inception, has undertaken to manage whatever donations are received, providing the expenditure falls within the ambit of the trust deed, which is education and the needs of children in the winelands. If a designated project falls beyond its scope, it will direct the funds to an appropriate and trustworthy administrator.