An award-winning wine professional originally from Tafelsig is making his workspace a site of opportunity for others, giving young people the chances he never had.

Denzel-Jonathan Swarts is a Senior Executive at Zoetendal Vineyards in Cape Agulhas, a two-time South African Prestige Award winner, and founder of the Son of the Soil Leadership Foundation, a non-profit that helps farm children stay at school and find a professional path into agriculture. He also serves on the boards of the Pinotage Youth Development Academy (PYDA) and the South African Wine Industry Professional Body (SAWIPB), has judged the Diners Club Winemaker of the Year competition since 2023, and in 2026 received the Growing Inclusivity Award for advancing diversity in the wine industry.

Getting into that space, which Swarts said he needed to “cement”, was not a straight road. He took many side roads and U-turns until his experience in youth development and wine-farm work came together in the outreach work he is doing now.

Son of the soil

Growing up on a Stellenbosch wine farm in the 1980s, the son of second-generation farmworkers, Swarts — like other children in that situation — was destined to perpetuate the cycle of labour. Not happy with such an assigned fate, he begged his parents to send him to an agricultural school, much to their dismay.

“My parents just kind of said, you know what? There’s no way we have this money to send you there.”

So he found another way; working on the farm during school holidays enabled him to save enough to pay for a short course at the Agriculture College of Elsenburg in his matric year.

From glasses to the export desk

After school, Swarts stayed on as a part-time farmworker, starting from the bottom, cleaning toilets and packing glasses, before working his way up to wine adviser. In that role he learnt to pour and explain wine to visitors, covering everything from tasting technique to quality. Swarts later moved into the export department, helping to prepare samples for laboratory testing.

By 2005, however, his frustration with the industry had grown. Swart felt it was not inclusive enough and was not offering people of colour the chance to grow. He left the wine industry and spent several years doing community-development work in Stellenbosch, Khayelitsha, Nyanga and Gugulethu as well as working with youth through the Edmund Rice Camps programme. It was during this time, and through his development work, that he met his wife Nadae and moved to Tafelsig. In 2011 a planned move to Australia fell through because of a visa application that did not come through in time. Then he lost another position in the Catholic-outreach sector when he was retrenched.

That same year the wine farm he had grown up on offered him a part-time position, and in 2012 he returned permanently. This time things moved quickly.

A voice for change

Swarts was given the opportunity to study business and advance his wine qualifications. In 2015 he was appointed tasting-room manager, the first senior manager of colour in that role on the farm. He used the position to bring farmworkers into his department alongside students, letting them share their inherited knowledge of wine directly with visitors.

“The authenticity of telling a story and the experience was important for me. I gave farmworkers the opportunity to come in alongside other students to work for me in my department and pretty much sell wine at a higher level.”

He went on to study small-scale winemaking and wine judging at Stellenbosch University and qualified as a junior sommelier at a time when that was still rare in South Africa, particularly for a person of colour. Swarts was also recognised as a young up-and-coming specialist and given a seat at various industry discussions on transformation and inclusivity.

Building a new path

It was out of these conversations that the Son of the Soil Leadership Foundation was born, aimed at breaking the cycle of farm children becoming farmworkers by helping them complete school and move closer to a university education.

In 2023 Swarts made what his industry peers called a bold move, leaving a well-established farm, operating since 1968, to join Zoetendal Vineyards, a farm only two to three years old at the time. Appointed Brand and Sales Executive, his expertise in winemaking and viticulture quickly saw him take on a broader role covering those departments as well as brand strategy.

Swarts prefers to be called a “consultative winemaker”, his role being closer to that of a managing director than a winemaker alone.

“Wherever this farm is going I am part of that legacy of building excellent wines and taking the farm into the market.”

And, with support, young, talented people of colour along with him.

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