Five friends who had spent decades in the drinks industry, buying wine, making wine, selling wine and brokering wine across international markets, had been having the same conversation for years.
They would eat well, drink seriously, and talk about what it might look like to finally make something together. Around that same table sat a wider circle of friends: the Motley Crew. Wine lovers who were not in the industry themselves, but who never missed a tasting.
Then Mike Minkley said it out loud. He looked around the table and pointed out what everyone already knew. There were two winemakers, a finance mind, and two marketing, distribution and sales specialists. The combination was almost too good. So why were they still just talking?
That question became Single Barrel Wine Co. Its first wine was Maze.
Most people know that gap. The dream you have with friends, and the thing you actually start. This is a story about closing it. These are dreamers with credentials.
They knew exactly how hard it is to launch a wine brand in South Africa. They had watched others try, often with a good product but the wrong route to market. What made this group different was the shape of the team: five people whose strengths interlocked, brought together by genuine friendship, able to make something none of them could have built alone.
Maze describes each individual’s life labyrinth, to get to a point in life with likeminded friends and continuing dreams together, rather than searching life’s riches alone.
Like a maze, a good wine can’t be rushed, it’s shaped one barrel, one harvest, one turn at a time. At Single Barrel Wine Co., we believe the richest finds aren’t at the end of the path, but in the company you keep along the way.
