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Q&A: Rollo Gabb, Journey’s End

Is ‘Journey’s End’ an appropriate name for such a dynamic estate?

From what I understand the name came about because in the 17th century travellers came into False Bay believing it was the end of their journey, and they’d got to Cape Town. It was also the last investment my father made. But ongoing, our journey’s increasing in momentum at a steady rate.

Why did you launch the sustainability focused Identity label?

First and foremost we use sustainable and ethical farming practices, and business practices, and that has been absolutely the case with Journey’s End from the start – a 25-year run – but we’ve never really referred to it on our labels. There is good reason to have producers out there who are doing really good things to shout about them a little bit more, in order to help guide consumers to follow brands that sit along alongside their own moral compass.

How important is it to wrap good wine in good design?

In retail, broadly, the gatekeepers are highly qualified. The wines that make it on to the retail shelf are very good value, well sourced and well produced in today’s age, certainly in the UK. I’d say it’s critical to have good, engaging packaging. Great packaging can come in a huge number of guises and it’s not necessarily just about the label being great, it’s more about who you want to talk to with your wine, who is this wine for, what’s the style of the wine. Does that style fit the type of person that you’re hoping to sell to, as well as online?

And what is special about the liquid in the bottle?

What we’ve done is used fruit from our Stellenbosch estate, which is four or five degrees cooler than central Stellenbosch, so we’ve got very good natural acidity, and introduced fruit from Swartland, where we have a growers’ programme, where we are producing and sourcing really nice components. With Identity we are incorporating some of that riper, more forward Swartland fruit alongside our fresher Stellenbosch components.

You practise sustainability across the estate – can you tell us more about the human element, via your Foundation, and the ongoing work that is doing?

We sit there on the hill with a nice vineyard and the nice view, but with poverty around us, and it’s not going to go away in a hurry. We’ve always felt a major responsibility for the broader community. We started off with part-funding a new school hall, then we did ‘Beat the Bully’, which is aiming to eradicate bullying across a number of different townships’ schools. Because if kids are being bullied they don’t turn up to school and then have no future. We’ve also participated in soup kitchens over the years, but felt we should ramp it up. We set a target of 8,000 meals a week, launched in September last year and we are currently on 22,000 meals a week and we have a target of a million meals by the end of this year.



Top photo shows members of the Journey's End team assisting the community 

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