Lukas’s Story

I grew up in Rawsonville in the Breedekloof Valley. At the time it was all bulk wine and co-ops, but thankfully these days there are some small producers out there changing the image, making high quality wines.

I was fortunate enough to grow up in a family that wasn’t wealthy. I say fortunate because I really had to graft to get where I am, hence the name of our Syrah. Winemaking wasn’t even in my frame of reference. Being from a modest background I wanted to chase a big salary, so initially I wanted to study medicine. When I realised at 17 even that would cost money I gave up on that too. In 2005 I took a job as harvest intern at Daschbosch, mainly just to keep busy. There were four Elsenburg grads there and I fell in love with the idea of making wine one day. After another harvest at Daschbosch the following year I received a massive blessing, earning a scholarship at Elsenburg via the support of the hostel master, ‘Oom’ Willie van Zyl.

I had six months to fill before the degree started, so I went to work as a second hand car salesman in Worcester. I remember all the cars I sold but the very first one was a green 1995 Honda Ballade, to a policeman from De Doorns.

I was at Elsenburg from ‘07 to ‘09 and shared a room with Reenen (Borman) who now makes the wine at Boschkloof. He was a bloody naughty student but he’s like a little brother to me and we’re still very close. A permanent position at Rijks in Tulbagh followed and three harvests later, after meeting my now wife Roxanne, I answered an online ad about a position on the East Coast in the USA. Half an hour later I was on the phone with them and two weeks after that I was on my way overseas.

The job was in Connecticut, a very cold area. I wanted to learn about selling wine and marketing wine now that I knew about the farming and making side. We made an off-dry Riesling and we bought in Cab from California and sold everything through the tasting room. While living there I was introduced to the world of fine wines with the owner and his friends. These guys were properly wealthy. I remember one of them saying at one of these tastings; ‘Men in suits work for men in pyjamas’. These were the pajama guys. They were so humble in sharing their wines. One of these guys would call me on a Monday and say, ‘I’m making bolognese and opening some Pomerol.’ And I’d get there and see three different Pomerols open. On any given night we’d be pulling out DRCs, Krug vintage champagnes, everything. And we’d talk about wine, not thinking about price - just judging each wine as either yucky or yummy. That philosophy just stuck with me. From a broke kid in Rawsonville not long before to tasting these wines week in and out, this was quite a gear shift. But it also makes me a bit less intimidated by the so-called rich crowd in South Africa because I’ll think about those guys and realise I’ve seen crazy wealth and understood what’s interesting about wine is beyond the price and the status and all that - wealthy or not, the joy is in the love of the drink itself.

I came back and got a job in Paarl for the ‘14 and ‘15 vintage but by then was really determined to enter the fine wine game, having just visited Burgundy, Champagne and the Loire Valley with Roxanne, Reenen and his wife. The real epiphany moment was a tasting at Domaine de la Chevalerie. The winemaker, Stephanie, opened an ‘89 and a ‘05 Cab Franc. When she pulled the cork of the ‘89 I could smell it even though she was five metres away. Those beautiful herbaceous flavours, the red and black fruit. Right then I decided I’d resign when I got back home. It was Geronimo time, time to take a leap of faith.

We thought we’d name ourselves after ourselves. I worried people would struggle to pronounce Van Loggerenberg but Roxanne reminded me that if people in Japan could work out some weird French surname we should be alright. Van Loggerenberg is my mother’s name.

The next task was finding really good grapes. Luckily, there was a block of old Chenin vines a friend of mine farmed for someone else in Stellenbosch. The vineyard was pretty badly looked after so I said I’d prune it and see what happened. I pruned two hectares by myself. This was the Kameraderie vineyard and we still look after it. Through a friend, Danie Carinus, I found a  small shed with a winemaking license in the Devon valley. Danie mentioned a flat on his farm had come available so I called Roxanne and said I’m going to trust my gut and go ahead. And that was the beginning. Everything was falling into place.

Then, on New Year’s Eve, ten minutes past midnight and two weeks before harvest, I tore basically all the tendons in my knee. There were no ambulances available so Reenen and Fritz (Schoon) had me on this big wooden bread board, put me in an old yellow jeep and took me to hospital. I managed that harvest hobbling around with a moon boot. The whole thing twisted loose again in the middle of harvest and the doctor shouted at me a lot, but I had to get the harvest done - there was no option. We made 4500 bottles and four wines: Break a Leg, our Blanc de Noir from Cinsaut grapes, the Kamaraderie Chenin, Geronimo Cinsaut and our Loire love letter, the Breton Cab Franc. 

When I took the wines to the barrel and started fermenting I knew I was on to something with these vineyards. We had only made two barrels of the Break a Leg Blanc de Noir with the intention of selling it unlabeled to help with the medical bills, but after an importer tasted and enjoyed the wine we decided to start getting more serious about it. It was a terroir driven, a more savoury and textured example of pink wine - not the typical style.

At the end of 2016, we got some great scores from Christian Eedes, Tim James chose Breton as his red wine of the year and we joined David Clarke from Ex Animo as local distributor. With the success of the 2016s I needed another Chenin and I really liked the idea of Stellenbosch meets Swartland. That was the birth of Trust Your Gut. 2017 was also the first vintage of Graft, our Syrah. And the rest, I think, is history.