Our Origins

Denzel Swarts a young dynamic 3rd generation wine farming worker in his family, felt call to strengthen his footprint in the wine industry after returning to the Wine Industry 8 years ago.His childhood experiences of growing up on a farm during the challenging days of South African history, drove him at a very early age to become analytical about the post-apartheid development goals.

His childhood dreams were to enter the Agriculture School where you would be able to study agriculture and get a head start to further study for this profession. Due to his parents, not being able to fund this dream, he had to re-route his field of study and his love for helping others become a priority in his life. In 2005, he left the wine industry out of frustration, he entered the social developmental space and increasingly was faced with the slow progress post-apartheid South Africa was struggling with. However, it was in the year 2008 after returning from Australia (The first time he left for another country, first time on an Aeroplane) that his life took a dramatic U-TURN, his father passed away 5 days before he left for the social justice conference and world youth day experience in Sydney, Australia. This prompted once again a new experience and way of thinking which will hopefully change the course of his life. He quickly progressed from being just a rural child too that of a global child, with a global view for change, development and equality. He soon got the opportunity to start writing programmes that would assist to develop rural youth to become active citizens of change and better leaders in their communities. After his return from a World Youth Day experience in Madrid, Spain in 2011 funding towards this project was re-allocated and all the workers had to be retrenched.

This journey took him back to the wine industry and 3 months later became permanent. After studying Junior Management through WineTech, he was promoted to Management in 2014 and become the first farm child to achieve such a position.

He soon used this opportunity to change the course of many farm workers and children whom were willing to progress; general farm workers, becoming wine advisors, previously disadvantage students getting access to wine advisory roles on farms.

This all contributes to who this young dynamic man is, with a passion for changing people’s lives. In his hopes of assisting and continuously changing the course of people’s lives for the good, he used what he knows best and that is wine to start a process of telling his story in the hope that it will inspire other young people.

Denzel soon wrote his live story down and connected the elements/ characters of his life to those of wines. This contributed to the birth of Son of The Soil Wines & Leadership Foundation and in a creative way brought about his wine range of three wines.

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Break The Mould - Chenin Blanc

The Undiscovered Jewel - Pinotage

The Infinite Sparkle - MCC

Greeting

Denzel Swarts

Director / Founder