Infatuations of a features writer: Nectar of the gods

A remarkable story about nuns, wine, collaboration and reaping what one sows

When a group of nuns sent a prayer and an e-mail out to various wineries around the world, it was only Philip Jonker and his wife Lindelize of Weltevrede Wine Estate that pushed reply.

For a long time the nuns from Monastery Nyamitanga in Uganda tried to be self sufficient and make their own altar wine from the old vines on their property; remnants of the French missionaries’s presence there in the Seventies. Without training or the correct materials and filtration systems, however, the Poor Clare sisters had little success – something that they expressed to President Yoweri Museveni when he visited the monastery and offered his support.

“You are welcome to come,” replied Philip Jonker in his e-mail. “If you take the trouble to get here all the way from Mbarara, Uganda to Weltevrede, I will teach you to make wine.”

Perhaps Jonker didn’t quite expect them to come when he pushed reply – he says that he knew that knew there was wine produced in neighbouring Kenya and Tanzania, but he didn’t know of any winemaking in Uganda. Either way, the experiences that he has gained since sending that initial e-mail will live with him and his wife forever.

“Lindelize and I love exploring,” he says. “We love stories. And we love crossing new boundaries, both geographically and within our minds. We love travelling in Africa and realized that it would take a spirit of adventure for the nuns to go from rural Uganda all the way to Bonnievale.”

When the nuns arrived in January of 2006 for a month, Jonker put them to work alongside the Weltevrede cellar team, learning about all aspects of winemaking, from the terroir and viticulture to the microbiology and chemistry.

Their particular interest was to make a sweet red altar wine, Jonker explains, and after their visit to Weltevrede they imported and planted Red Muscadel and Shiraz vines from South Africa, as well as Pinot Noir vines vines from France. The Shiraz vines were the only ones that flourished, and with Uganda being neither a northern nor southern hemisphere they experienced two harvest seasons in one year.

In 2009, the nuns returned to Weltevrede with their wine (which was fermented in soup casseroles and pasteurised on an open fire before bottling), seeking comment and analysis of their product, and also advice on how to go about developing a small winery on the premises.

“I think they really produce a good wine now that is spot on with the style they aim for,” Jonker elaborates. “Improvement would mean to be able to do it consistently and with less effort. This will involve being better equipped and gaining experience with each vintage. Previously they had to buy their wine and as they produce their own cheese, honey, bread, etc. it makes sense to produce their own wine now. They have made a label for their wine and apart from what they use as altar wine and for wine with their own meals they will sell to other monasteries in Uganda as well.”

The questions of how mutually enriching this experience was for the Jonkers and the nuns is one that Philip says could write a book on.

“There is so much to be said about the lessons and experiences from a winemaking point of view. But much more, also about life, about the world we live in,” he says. “We also returned with so many thoughts on Africa and its economical challenges. You go with certain preconceived ideas of how things are in Uganda, and you realize you were wrong. You think about political and social systems, you discover differences in culture. You are confronted by your own flaws of viewing people, the world, and being quick to make generalizations.

“You discover that those with the least are often the ones who are quickest to give. You look at aid projects and wonder why they are not working. I think giving often implicates someone superior and someone inferior, no matter how noble the motive. And maybe the real problem of a large proportion of mankind is not having little, but being considered of little worth.”