Sage lessons for Solms wine estate investors
Everyone Phoenix story, loves”a says Tommy Hall, the new African American owner of the Solms-Delta Wine Company. Director of global operations for Hewlett Packard, Hall has come to the rescue of the shuttered Solms Delta wine estate near Franschhoek.
In 2001, when Mark Solms (a scientist, complete with wild Einsteinian hair) and his friend Richard Astor (scion of the Anglo-American Astor family), bought two neighbouring farms, their goal was to produce noteworthy wines and uplift the farmworker community.
They put their farms up as collateral to secure a R46m loan to buy a third farm called Deltameer that could sustain the local workers. By 2007, when Solms and Astor handed over 33.3% of the Solms-Delta business to the employees, it was a thriving boutique wine estate.
Through a worker trust, it spent lavishly on new housing, a creche, a clinic, and an education and sports and recreation facilities. However, between the cost of land restitution and the economic challenges of the wine industry, their dream of handing workers the title deed to the lands they worked ended in tears.
“We were amateurs,” conceded Solms at the recent relaunch party. “We should have taken better business advice from people in the wine industry.” But if Solms and Astor didn’t know what they were doing, the government knew even less.
In 2016, by which time the farm was haemorrhaging money, the then department of rural development & land reform pledged R65m towards purchasing and revitalising it in terms of its Strengthening the Relative Rights of People Working the Land programme, which aimed to give farm employees a 50% share in the farms they worked on.
However, after a promising start the government reneged on the deal. This forced the farm into business “rescue ”— a sixyear process of value destruction during which it was run into the ground.
Once touted as a model for black empowerment, the venture became a cautionary tale of how not to do things. If Solms’ first mistake was not fully understanding the business side of things, his second was to partner with former president Jacob Zuma’s government — something he now describes as an “idiotic” move. Enter Tommy Hall, who brings business savvy, fresh investment and a desire to realise the original vision through the new Solms-Delta Wine Company — 100%-blackowned by the Hall family.
“This is a separate company that has many of the same goals as Mark Solms in terms of community upliftment, skills development and employment opportunities,” Hall says. “However, we want to make sure we do it in a manner which is both socially equitable and financially viable over the long term.”
Hall, together with Solms, plans to reopen the farm’s restaurant, restore the buildings and jobs, and revive the human development projects. Under consultant winemaker Francois Haasbroek, the farm has marked its return with two Rhône-style blends, initially made from outsourced grapes.
Hall expects the farm to be back in full production from 2026 and says he’s in it for the long haul, as the original dream of Solms and Astor “cannot be allowed to fail”.
Yes, he has been warned about all SA’s problems, but says: “I’m not concerned about what a democracy does at 30 years, or what vineyards do, they’ve been here for politics 300 years.”“are filtering down into
Hall, who wanted to retire somewhere outside America
— where the “toxic, divisive” daily life ”— says he’s chosen to emigrate to SA for the “better quality of life and better pace of life — a place where you feel welcome”. In his estimation “there’s no place better than here”.
We can only hope he still thinks so once he’s tried to export his new wine through the gridlocked Cape Town harbour. Hall will need to muster all his logistics expertise as well as the remaining reservoirs of goodwill towards Solms Delta if he is to make this rather careworn dream finally come true.