Ep. 1822 Carolyn Martin | Voices With Cynthia Chaplin

Welcome to the Italian Great Geek podcast. Join us as we explore personal stories of travel and tasting with Italy's must know grape for idols. Chart your own course with my Italian Great Geek journal, your personal tasting companion to accompany the series. Available now on Amazon. With thanks to calendula and partners for their generous support with this project. Welcome to the Italian wine podcast. I'm Cynthia Chaplin, and this is voices. Every Wednesday, I will be sharing conversations with international wine industry professionals discussing issues in diversity, equity and inclusion through their personal experiences working in the field of one. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and rate our show wherever you get your pods. Hello. This is Cynthia Chaplin. And today, I'm delighted to welcome Carolyn Martin to voices. She's been a guest on our wine marketing and communication show in the past, but today we are going to take a look at her wine business from another perspective, my favorite DEAI perspective. Carolyn is the co founder and the marketing director of creation wines in South Africa, which she started in two thousand and two with her husband. And since then, with a strong focus on sustainability, the winery has become involved with the integrated production of wine scheme, the Landmark Foundation, and has received accreditations from Envira wines, and the WWF conservation champions. So the wire was named one of the top ten world's best vineyards and number one in Africa. And beyond all of this, creation works hard to enrich the lives of families in their agricultural community. Setting education and food security as priorities. So this is really exciting for me. Thank you so much, Carolyn, for coming on today. It's a great pleasure to be here with you today. Well, I know you grew up in a wine family, and you're now third generation wine estate owner, and you and your husband bought your farm in two thousand and two and named it creation, which is a big name to take on, you know, with all the images and the responsibility that a name like that will evoke for people. So Let's talk for a minute about why you chose that name and and what it means to you. Well, we situated in the Himalan Ada, which very aptly translates as the place of heaven and earth, and creation is all about a sense of place. So I had to find a name that was relevant to the name, the place of heaven and earth. And then the most important thing about it was really that we are in the heart of the Cape floral kingdom, and it's one of the most biodiverse wine regions in the world. So working with nature is absolutely the total inspiration and innovation that is creation. And JC said to me, the name has to be all about nature and how we work together with nature. And so it took me about six months to think of this name. And, yeah, I kind of happened upon it during that grim phase of sleep, you know, when you're just sort of waking up in the morning. And I was hugely excited to see that it wasn't taken anywhere else in the world, and it was just absolutely, you know, what his intentions were. One of the things that's so important is that it translates into so many different languages. So it's an easy name to remember and to understand. Absolutely. And it's very inspiring. You know, it's a It's a big name. It it does certainly put a lot of responsibility on what you do there, but it's inspiring, and I think people can relate to the concept of creation and creating things. So very, very brave to take that on, I think. And I know that, you know, you're growing high quality pinot noir and chardonnay. So what else is happening at creation nowadays? You've been going for over two decades, and you've got a reputation for innovation and trend setting. So fill us in on what's happening at the winery, you know, now twenty plus years past the beginning. Yeah. Well, when we discovered our little piece of paradise, there was literally just a few sheep grazing here and to ship it. And I think what is so remarkable about, South Africa and also this region is that we have some of the most ancient soils in the world here dating from two hundred and fifty five to nine hundred million years old. And besides that, obviously, the proximity to the Atlantic Ocean, and the orographic effect of the very towering babylons Tur in Mountain, which is actually sixty three meters higher than Table Mountain definitely meant that this was the right place to grow vineyards. So I'm starting there because, you know, it all happens in the vineyards first. And we have four video cultures and winemakers in our team. And I think initially the big challenges were that we needed to find the right place. So we certainly felt that we had the right place, but there was hardly any infrastructure. So a very remote location, new territory, and we had to establish creation from scratch. Wow. Incredible. It it's it's been it's been an incredible journey, very rewarding in many senses. You know, now we have eighty five people that work here. And there was a one shepherd beforehand, you know, and those eighty five people probably look after on average about four people and their families each. So it's quite incredible the reach that we have. I think over the years, with the energy that is creation together with our team and our partners and all of the stakeholders, especially our clients, because our clients have had an incredible, incredible impact on our business as well, just because of our listening and how engaged they get in the in the in the project that we're working on, you know, and want to offer their expertise and skills. That's been really wonderful how we share that with our team. So we've built this worldcast reputation for Pinan Juan, Chardonnay, and, you know, created a very unique culture, which is all about provenance and sustainability. And we did that from the beginning. Some people you know, become well known and build famous brands and then kind of think about how they become sustainable afterwards. This has been very much part of the way that I grew up and it's been part of our journey. And I think that's so important. So it's about how we've brought the community along with us. So for us, it's also about the transformational and innovative wine and wellness, the food pairing experiences that we create at creation. And the other thing is, you know, by listening to the clients, as I said, before, and collaborating with leading scientific and academic initiatives in our industry, we've used applied science to understand and respond to nature better. And the team and the community are really bind us to the slabs. We are so blessed by their support. And we couldn't do what we do without the team. You know, what I really think is inspirational is an example last year in twenty twenty three. We had a situation where we had a rainstorm coming on Monday, and we had to pick our most important pinot noir, the art of pinot noir block. And we only knew about the rainstorm, from the weather forecast on Saturday evening. And when we phoned the vineyard team, on Saturday evening and said, could we possibly pick on Sunday morning at six o'clock? We had forty other vineyard team there, and the whole vineyard was picked by eleven o'clock in the morning. And I asked Katherine, you know, this is so unusual to be able to do this. In South Africa. And she just said to me, you know, we're so much part of the team. I'm not a worker anymore. I'm part of a team, and it's all about the work that we do every day and how that actually then gets brought to the table. And so I understand the full process. And I just thought, you know, that is magnificent. So that's a great example of the whole team's the whole team getting over the finishing line together. It's so interesting. I mean, everything that you just mentioned, that's a great example of what you're doing on I am, you know, personally really impressed by creations dedication to the physical and mental well- well-being of your team, you know, of everyone, as you said, not just the eighty five people who work there, but the families they support as well. And On your website, you use the term holistic wellness, which I really love. So can you kind of explain to our listeners what holistic wellness for your team means and how you're building this healthy environment for everybody there? You know, what are the challenges your team members face in their daily lives, as you said, they're supporting families. You know, how important is this program for the overall community that creation exists in? So, you know, our philosophy is what grows together, goes together. And, that is about the team as much as it is about the work that we're doing kind of in the vineyards and the wine and food pairing we're doing. And I think wine has a beautiful way of evoking memories of sharing, loving, and caring. But it's not just about that sort of wonderful feeling of well-being and warm fuzzy feeling. It's about also embracing sustainability, and that needs to be shared with all of the stakeholders. And, you know, having been born and raised in the Cape Buinlands, I had the privilege of living close to the soil and the people on four wine estates. And I know about the struggle and effort it takes to raise a vineyard, and all the hands and hearts of going to it. I don't underestimate this wonderful feeling of well-being when tasting wine. Especially a successful vintage, but it also takes a huge amount of tenacity to cope with whether water shortages, fire, political interference, and viruses in the vineyard, you know. So these are the kind of things that we need to mitigate. And work on. And it's not easy. No. Absolutely. And I think, you know, most people around the world are aware of things like, you know, fire, climate change, you know, lack of water or too much water in some places at the moment. But political interference is something that is not, affecting most vineyards in the world. So how is that affecting creation from time to time? Well, a good example was during COVID when we were shut down for eighteen months. And we, you know, had fifty people in our tasting room that, we had to look at how we could actually, multi skill them and upscale, some of what they were doing and how they could actually multitask as well because we needed to make sure that we kept everybody here and working. And I think, you know, that was a great example of fortitude and tenacity and just like leaning into each other and working together, and it just has helped people to understand more about what what everybody does and and their roles and to have, sort of different level of respect for the work. That each other do. And so I think that's important. And let you talk a little bit more if you don't mind quickly about the team going back to the previous question is, you know, a healthy team is a very happy and motivated team. And, people can talk about sustainability, but if you have unhappy people or a spoilt environment, people are not necessarily going to enjoy a a wine tourism experience. Are they or, actually buy from you. So they might not buy sustainability, but they definitely not going to, come to a place and enjoy an environment, which is not, a good environment and where people are not happy. And so I think one of the things that's really important is that we've intensified our focus on our team's physical and mental well-being. And what's interesting about that is that it's literally means that we have almost zero absenteeism. And the productivity has gone through the roof because basic things for South Africans like transport and good nutrition are not necessarily readily available. And also sometimes you know, levels of education need to be considered. For example, people's emotional and social well-being, and how they work in a safer or inclusive workspace is very, very important. So the way that we work with medical doctors and naturopath and nutritionists and psychiatrists and psychologists and occupational therapists has fundamentally changed the way that the team work. And, you know, it's helped them in their personal lives and also in their workspace. So I think there are so many aspects to, people's social well-being, which maybe doesn't always get considered in work workplaces? Yes. Absolutely. I think that's completely true. And, you know, we need to comment on the fact that the majority of your team at creation is, of course, black South African so we're not talking about, vineyard Stewart who grew up, you know, on wine estates. We're talking about people who are part of the team who potentially have not been involved in in this, you know, wine industry, wine business, wine world beforehand. So the idea of seeking to inform and to educate and to include is so important in what you do. Are you enjoying this podcast? Don't forget to visit our YouTube channel, mama jumbo shrimp. For fascinating videos covering Stevie Kim and her travels across Italy and beyond, meeting winemakers, eating local foods, and taking in the scenery. Now back to the show. Yeah. And I mean, what is so interesting for me is that when, the team are given an opportunity, they really take it, you know, completely. They are so excited about the opportunity to be educated in wine. And I think one of the beautiful things about what we do is because we have such a diverse team, the way that we communicate with our guests come to the tasting room is is so wonderful because we use this, sensorial tasting experience, and it's in a way a very Peter Gogic way of understanding wine. And, it's so beautiful because it is, you know, the senses are the pathways to the mind, and it's such an easy way for people to understand wine. So a great example might be, for example, tasting the art of chardonnay and using one of the seashells from the ocean, which is just eight kilometers away from us. And explaining why the proximity of the ocean is so important in the production of fine wine because the oceans around eleven to twelve degrees. So you can imagine those winds that come in from the ocean are really critical to the long, so ripening of the grapes. And then yeah. And then and then, doing the shell phone testing with our guests so that for a moment, they kind of transport themselves to the ocean, and they just take themselves to a different place. They they have this neural link, so to the ocean. And, you know, the way that, it helps them focus on the wine and how it changes the actual tasting of the wine. So I think it's really, like, urine using those neural pathways is very interesting. And, the team then through these kind of tastings that we do, these sensorial tastings begin to understand the relevance of the sense of place. And one aspect of Taiwan wind, for example, Another thing that we do in the tasting room is we we have eight different kinds of soil types around our, winery and tasting room facility. And just to be able to touch those ancient branet soils or decomposed boccathot shale and see the temperature of the different stones is so interesting. And so we are we are introducing our, wines and our terroir through sensory testing, and this helps, the team connect as well, to Nature, which is pretty much what delivers this amazing wine. But besides that, we also do WSE training. So at the moment, we have at the moment, we employ eighty five people and support in the local community about a hundred and ten thousand people. And one of the things that we do is train people in WSET. And also some of the training and we do besides doing things like, leadership training and communication skills training and alcohol awareness training, and we also do training on diversity and inclusion. And I think it's so interesting for the team to see different approaches as well. And, we do a lot of training on things like social styles training so that they're able to read each other and the clients that come into the tasting room. And we have, eight people that are currently, WST level, one twenty that are trained to level two in our team, three to level three, and then an intro to South African wine through the South African and summer years association, there are around eighteen of our team, including some of our chefs. So I think this is really important. We're training some of our chefs as summer years. Then we have some junior summer years. There are around five people in our team that are junior summer years. It's a fantastic level of breadth and depth of, you know, opportunity you're providing for your team. You've used the term upskilling and multiskilling which I think is really important to, you know, when you're dealing with this large number of people at various levels of education, various level of exposure to the industry beforehand, just respecting the fact that everybody needs and wants to learn different things in different ways. So, overall, it sounds like you've got everybody on your team involved in this program of, you know, education and upskilling. So Have you been able to retain more people by having this? You know, what's the level of success? How are you measuring the success of your, you know, kind of holistic wellness and educational outreach to your team? Yeah. So I'm I I think, you know, what's interesting is the average time that a team member works at creation at the moment, remember that we have we sort of have grown over the years or so, but it's six point five years, which is double the average time that we see on most incoming CDs and actually in our business. So six and a half years. So it's double No. That's that's a very good number, especially, you know, in in our industry. We know that people don't tend to stay in the same job for very long. So clearly, what you're doing is appealing to people and helping retain staff, which is part of being sustainable in and of itself. Yeah. I mean, I think that everything that we do is really aimed at enhancing individual and team skills and expanding career horizons. And it's about how do we realize people's inherent potential? Because it's there and it just needs to be recognized and actually developed. And that definitely creates a more sustainable team. Yeah. I think for us, it's as well. It's about how do we transform the value of agriculture from the vineyard to the table and change jobs into careers. This is really our intention. And also to create like we want to create like a verbal wine visa. So I've been working on this with the Californian Wine Institute, and we now working on it with the IV, and we have we've been working on it with the British Wine Institute, and we are trying to make sure that people have a chance to have a world vision, that we create better bilateral relations in our business and that we create a world vision for young people and that we share skills and innovation. We all share the same challenges, and we could really help some of our friends overseas. So you know, we work in opposite seasons, and we definitely would be able to help by, for example, during our harvest, sometimes we have young people coming to work with us in South Africa from all over the world, and we would like to say more young people to, other wine producing countries in the world. We'd also like to share some familiar skills and also share skills and also, you know, front of house skills because It's only by exposure that people have the chance to really learn. And a great example was, during COVID in twenty twenty one when I sent three of my team to work in a in two Michelin Star restaurants in the Netherlands for three months. And just the kind of most beautiful thing about it was that they not only came back, having, a different concept about, you know, organization, but they also made a big contribution in terms of their creativity to the restaurants that they visited. And so that was really interesting. So the chefs in the Netherlands said to them before they left, you know, we thought that we were just gonna get some extra hands and what we realized was that there is a lot of creativity that you brought to the table, which is really exciting. It's so fantastic. I think this is the way of the future, really, as you said, you know, developing bilateral and trilateral programs. That allow people to discover other careers and why most people don't even really realize how many careers there can be in hospitality. So, you know, providing these opportunities for people on your team to, you know, broaden their horizons and learn what else is out there is inspiring, and it gives them a great sense of self esteem, I'm sure, as well as more, you know, ambition and being able to see themselves in successful positions. So I know in in twenty nineteen, you were designated a Paul Harris fellow by the rotary international for exactly this, your dedication to your community. So, you know, with all of your experience for the past, you know, two and a half decades, What do you see as the biggest obstacle to creating a more inclusive and equitable wine world for South Africa? You know, what advice would you give to other wine estate owners? And how do you mentor your young people who want to get into the industry and stay in it? I mean, I think, some of the issues that we face are things like, geo transport issues, you know, in rural communities, one of the biggest problems that we've got is the lack of transport or safe transport. And so I think it's really important to provide that. And, you know, we've certainly done that with the Pebbels project. One of the important parts of the Pebbels project, which, by the way, it looks after the first thousand days of the children of the Himalan Adders' lives, to, you know, it's a facility that takes care of the first thousand days early childhood development, and then we'll come back to this because I wanna talk about this too. Okay. So we'll come back and we'll talk about that afterwards, but let's just talk about the Paul Harris thing. I mean, the Paul Harris the Paul Harris fellowship, was really because of my involvement, I think, in setting up the Peddle's project and, you know, how we just believe that it's totally content intuitive to not extend sustainability measures to us, to our surrounding community. It just help spread so much incredibly valuable knowledge, but it also supports the community. You can imagine if, you know, being a, a wonderful person working in the vineyards or the apple orch it's a woman, perhaps your children might have been before the Peddle's project was there being looked after by the last person in the community who'd had a child and imagine looking after a newborn child and then looking after all the other little children while the other mummies were working. I think, you know, that's a tall task, and really what we needed to do was make sure that we had teachers that were there and actually could support those women and, you know, that there was a place where their children would be safe, supported, and they would have a full nutrition program so that when they got home, all of their homework was done, and all of those things that needed to happen happened that they had proper health care and proper facilities, for their children. Let's let's circle on to this, the Himalinar of Pebble's ed education project. You were a founding member in two thousand and seventeen. And, you know, as you said, the work revolves around providing nutrition, providing fresh produce, you know, and providing safe daycare and things. What gave you the idea? How did this start and and what's happened since it began? It's been going now for about seven years. So how has it grown? What's going on there? I mean, it was quite tough to get it started. I have to say. It took me about three years, and I nearly gave up because people were convinced that it, you know, it it wasn't gonna happen just because of all of the sort of geo transport issues that we faced and then finding, obviously, a place for the community. And then I needed sort of some considerable investment to get it up and running. But just as I sort of gave up Kapewine auction came to the party, and we got the right funding. And it is more than, sort of daycare center. It really is a world class education facility for, young children, and it's fundamentally changing their level of education before we only had, a rural farm school here, which was run by the government. It was terribly badly underfunded. It had a bus system, which always broke down, and the nutrition, was not really good for the kids there. And so my feeling is that education is what's going to fundamentally change the opportunities for our country, and it starts right at a very young age, and it starts by looking after the people in our community. And so that first thousand days in early childhood development center is just incredible in terms of the way that it's making the or that it's that it's helping the young children of our region to prepare for school. And then the at the moment, the facility is until age thirteen, a full school, with different grades in different classes before they used to have, like, three grades in a class, and it was woefully inadequate, you can imagine. Full education, healthcare, nutrition, and transport until age thirteen. And, I think what's really exciting is that for example, one of the youngsters that was in the, government school that closed on halfway through the year in her grade seven year, which was just before she went to high school. She would have fallen out of school at that point if it hadn't been for pebbles because there was no government school that would accept her, to finish halfway through the year in school. And She's now going to study chartered accounting at Salambach university. And so, you know, here is somebody who was in the art school care center, but actually managed to get three grade seven and get into high school because of pebbles. So Pebbles is changing lives so completely and we are creating the new leaders of the community, and I'm hugely excited about the level of education that's happening there. We also have a skills development center which we started last year. And at the moment, the young people are there they are being educated in WSTT, and they're also being educated as young sommeliers, and they are Some of them are training. They're doing the sort of introductory training to wine training. So they'll eventually go to Arsenalburg if that really inspires them. And there are also some youngsters. We won a international film festival award, and So some of them, were involved in that process because I saw there was a CSI component that we managed to get them in, scholarships to, the Cape Town film school. So lots of, opportunities. What we have is a lot of wonderful clients coming through our tasting room. And it's these people that are funding the PIPples project, together with a Cape Wine auction, which we're very involved in, as well as some of our, people in our community. And, obviously, through the creation tasting room as well, the donations that come in from our visitors, we normally include the Pables project as part of our wine and wellness experience, which people have at creation. And, for example, we have a fan at the moment, and we to fan yourself because it's a reform. And we say, if you're a creation fan and you wanna play it for to Peddle's by adding a donation of a hundred and fifty rand to your meal, you can feed a child for a week. That's an example. Yeah. That's this is incredible. And I it sounds like you really see you know, the result of this children are amazing. You know, they they are grateful. They are sponges. They grow. They learn. And as you said, you've had this lovely success story with this young girl who's gonna go on to study accountancy. And paying it back, you know, writing, writing a beautiful blog. I I'm I'm interested in what other wine owners, in South Africa think of your project. You know, what advice would you give other wine estate owners? You know, they more people should be doing this. You know, how do we get this to happen outside of, you know, Hamilton Narda? Well, my feeling is that when you are, involved in the community, the community definitely takes care of you, which is amazing. So it's like a full circle. And I believe that, you know, it's part of our legacy. It's part of looking after our heritage, both our natural heritage and also, our winemaking businesses to get involved with, the community and to give back. And there are a lot of wine farms that are doing that. There is the facet foundation, which is hugely funded by Delegraff. And there are many other Wyness states. I do think that, you know, the great opportunity for South Africa is that we have a chance to transform as I said, the value of agriculture. And I do believe that one of the things that is wonderful is that we also, you know, when we are recruiting, we will be recruiting these young people in the future, won't we? We're gonna have fantastically well educated young people that are going to be re recruited into the team and be able to kind of have wonderful careers. So it just makes sense to create a more sustainable career path for everybody, and it starts with our children, and our communities around us. So for me, it's a no brainer. Well, I don't think I can I can take this to a better place than that? I completely agree, you know, our future is in our children and the education that we're putting in investing into young people right now. And seeing the payback is wonderful. So I'm glad to hear that that is all happening with you and with other, wine estates in South Africa, and I wish you all the very best. And I hope this continues to grow and be successful and sustain not only your community, but inspire other communities as well. So Thank you so much for coming on today, Carol, and I really appreciate it. It's a huge pleasure. It was lovely talking to you. Thank you for listening. And remember to tune in next Wednesday, I'll be chatting with another fascinating guest. Italian wine podcast is among the leading wine podcasts in the world, and the only one with a daily show. Tune in every day and discover all our different shows. You can find us at Italian wine podcast dot com, SoundCloud, Spotify Himalaya or wherever you get your pot.