CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — Like millions of others, Natasha Jacka went stir-crazy during a COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, until it dawned on her that there might be great opportunity in having nowhere to go.Jacka used the pandemic and the suspension of her studies at an agricultural college to plant her own vineyard at her family home in South Africa. It was a way to fast forward her dream of becoming a winemaker by bringing it, literally, within reach.Nothing in the wine world moves too fast, though, and it was four years before the first harvest and vintage. Jacka’s debut wines from grapevines that she planted, cared for and harvested in the yard of her parents’ sea-facing home in Cape Town — also stomping the grapes herself — were greeted with high praise by critics.
Natasha Jacka, left, and her mother, Sonia Jacka, work in their vineyard in Cape Town, South Africa, Thursday, June 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Neil Shaw)
What a relief, she said.“It could have been so much work and if it doesn’t deliver, you know, then you just feel ... I can’t imagine how I’d feel,” Jacka said. “I wasn’t looking at it like, ‘oh this is going to make a fortune,’ or anything like that. This is a labor of love.”
