ROMA – LEOMA Monaheng’s wine is not your average wine. It is a white wine based on the French inspired Chenin Blanc grape variety.
“My wine is called Kasi Farm Housewine,” said Monaheng, a National University of Lesotho (NUL) trained young man.
Other than sending you to bliss as you take a sip, white wine is healthy too. It can lower cholesterol, help protect your heart, balance your blood sugar, boost your brain, fight off colds, and more. Listen to the story of how it all started.
“In my family there are only two boys, I and my brother,” he said.
“The absence of a female figure among the siblings meant our mom left us to fend for ourselves as we grew up.”
That meant they both had to take up chores that would otherwise be taken by girls in the family, in addition to boys’ chores.
“In that way,” he said, “sustainability was wired into our fabric from a very young age—we were taught that if we wanted something we had to go get it ourselves.”
That experience would become handy later in life. He went to the NUL and studied Urban and Regional Planning (URP). Well, he was not that much into it but “I always believed part of university training was to broaden our thinking abilities and to help us solve everyday problems”.
By saying so, he was revealing a secret young graduates. The real life is not divided into courses you specialised in at school. Graduates can use thinking abilities to explore all kinds of things when out there. They just have to let thinking abilities help them solve problems.
“We can never be limited by the subjects we took at school”, he added.
While still at the NUL, he was very much aware of the scourge of unemployment in Lesotho. For someone who was raised to create paths for himself, he was already thinking about available alternatives when he finished studying. He started growing food at home in Ha Pita, Maseru and selling some of it. His business, a home business, would be called a home farm, or to be precise, “Kasi Farm.”
“First of all, this was more than just making a living,” he said.
“It was also about making young people aware that farming is not only for certain people. It is for anyone route.”
Here is a cool fellow, from the ghettos of Maseru, taking the farming. If he can, why can’t anyone do it anywhere else in Lesotho? But he had to be a bit different. For instance, he grew stuff with bizarre names like Okra.
Well, he grew it because no one was doing it, at least not many people.
He also included eggplant and yellow pepper in his repertoire. With time, he realised he had to find more land. He and his brother explored and acquired pieces of land in Thaba-Bosiu and Teya-Teyaneng. Now he is growing all kinds of foods including spinach, beans, cabbage, and even lettuce.
He and his family pulled resources together to build their farms. His products have reached the shelves in stores as varied as Maluti Fresh Produce Market, Enrich Store, Pick ’n Pay Masianokeng and Pioneer Mall, Mpeoa Supermarket, ShopRite Checkers, Fruit and Veg City and others.
However, the major component of today’s story is about Monaheng and his brother’s adventures into wine. He got introduced to HighLands Bliss Wine folks and they agreed to work together to develop wine for Kasi Farm.
The wine would end up acquiring a name of the farm in which it is made, Kasi Farm House Wine. He said although they started with red wine, they ended up with white wine, what he calls Chenin Blanc wine.
The red wine, in his view, “wasn’t that consistent,” he said. “It didn’t stain the glass.” The white one is of high quality and, oh boy! Is it tasty! It should be.Chenin Blanc is the kind of grape variety renowned for creating some of the best wines in the world. They plan to grow more grapes and build a lasting wine brand.
“Wines,” he said, “are tricky” in the sense that they need to mature to be appreciated in the markets and that takes a lot of effort but they will dig in.
“A good wine is a mature wine,” he said.
Own Correspondent