The art of goodwill and wine

• Beneficiary Selection & Purpose: Atterbury Trust was chosen as a beneficiary of the Eskort & Saronsberg Liberi wine charity drive, directing proceeds toward educational bursaries and food support initiatives.
• Art-Driven Wine Labels: The 2021 Liberi project features six emotive wine labels using artwork by Claudette Schreuders, inspired by last year’s success with Sam Nhlengethwa’s art.
• Fundraising Ambitions & Scale: Building on the prior year’s R800,000 raised, this year’s initiative produced 10,000 bottles of 2017 Pinotage Reserve, aiming to generate R1.5 million—half of which Eskort directly contributes.
• Impact & Oversight: Past funds (R800,000) supported two children’s homes with full oversight by Atterbury Trust, ensuring proper use for improving living conditions.
• Collaborative Community Effort: The initiative ties together wine appreciation, art, and community upliftment—leveraging relationships across Eskort, Saronsberg, artists, and Atterbury Trust to support Terugploeg’s bursary and food programs.

Atterbury Trust is humbled to have been chosen as a beneficiary of this year’s innovative Eskort and Saronsberg Liberi wine charity drive. Last year this charity scheme raised upwards of R800 000 through the sale of an exclusive wine collection. Proceeds are used for education and food initiatives to help those most in need.

This year, art features again as part and parcel of the programme, as a way of illustrating real need. Liberi in its original Latin translates to children in English. This fact inspired the use of work from the renowned artist Claudette Schreuders for a series of emotive wine labels as part of the project.

The 2021 Liberi goodwill project aims to generate donations for Atterbury Trust through selling a limited edition of the superb Saronsberg Liberi 2017 Pinotage Reserve in cases of six bottles of wine. Proceeds of the wine sales will be used for Atterbury Trust’s student bursary scheme, as well as for the Terugploeg give-back programme that supplies food and support for needy families.

We asked Eskort chief executive officer Arnold Prinsloo to tell us more about this remarkable project.

When one thinks about Eskort, wine is not the first thing that comes to mind. How did the Liberi initiative come about?

We believe an organisation should be fully part of the broader community in which it operates. For us this means being involved with many local goodwill organisations such as churches, feeding schemes, schools and similar groups in the Estcourt and Heidelberg areas, where our factories are.

Secondly, we love wine! Nick van Huysteen, who owns Saronsberg Cellar in Tulbagh in the Western Cape is a good friend of mine and we’ve been buying wine from him for many years.

In addition, one of my other passions is South African art. After I bought a work by Sam Nlhengethwa, during a visit to him at his home he told me he grew up in the Ratanda township of Heidelberg. Two of his uncles worked at Eskort. This sparked the idea for Liberi within me.

The brainchild inspired by my conversation with Sam was that we could create a special limited edition of Saronsberg wine, illustrated with Sam’s art on the labels and sell this wine to the benefit of the children’s home and home for disabled children we already support. Sam agreed and granted us the rights to use six of his artworks as special wine labels.

Nick helped me in choosing specific works of art to use as labels. Dewaldt Heyns, the award-winning Saronsberg winemaker then stepped in with a tremendous Bordeaux blend, of which 4 000 bottles were produced.

I chose a heavy, broad bottle that could act as an appropriate canvas to display Sam’s stunning art and position this special, limited edition wine appropriately as exclusive and desirable. All we needed was a name for the wine and project.

As the proceeds of the wine sales were to be used to improve the lives of children, I googled the word for translations in isiZulu, Sepedi, isiXhosa, Italian, French and Latin. I loved the Latin word Liberi that appeared. And so a new brand was born.

Are we correct in thinking last year’s Liberi project you’ve just told us about was going to be a once-off, but that its huge success has inspired you to do it again?
Yes, that’s right. It seems as if people truly love the concept. It’s an amazing wine, wrapped in stunning local art and to top it off, buying the wine means you are also improving the lives of others through a simple and straightforward act.

Another important aspect of the project is that we do not only generate donations through the selling of Liberi, but we also ensure that the money is put to good use for exactly what was originally intended. For instance, we managed last year’s projects to improve the two children’s homes ourselves. This means we are responsible for the appropriate, practical implementation of improving lives and living conditions. Oversight is crucial and we provide that.

Please give us a summary of exactly what was achieved last year.

Upwards of R800 000 was received in wine sale donations. Eskort donated R400 000 and direct individual sales generated about R400 000 too. We sold the Saronsberg Liberi Bordeaux blend in cases of six for the price of R1 188 per case. The wine sold out quickly.

Atterbury Trust feels blessed to have been chosen as a recipient of this year’s Liberi 2021 wine sale donations and is especially pleased that the new Terugploeg give-back initiative will benefit specifically. Eskort is actually a long-term benefactor of Atterbury Trust already. Please tell us more about the brand’s relationship with the Trust.
As a long-term fan of Atterbury founders Francois van Niekerk and Louis van der Watt, as well as Atterbury Trust managing trustee Zahn Hulme, I was privileged to be invited to one of the very first annual Versnit events that blends wine and song to generate donations for the benefit of Atterbury Trust. Versnit, held at Rust en Vrede wine estate in Stellies, inspired us to donate products such as processed meat for the trust’s goodwill projects on an ongoing basis. We also try to use our influence to motivate others to donate too.

Why did you earmark the Terugploeg give-back initiative specifically for the Liberi project this year?
Louis van der Watt and Terugploeg co-founder Lood Bester invited us to the launch of the programme and attending the event inspired us anew to continue the Liberi wine donation project this year. Terugploeg is a perfect recipient through the Atterbury Trust structure, to support an initiative exactly in line with our own values.

In addition, Eskort is also assisting the project with the provision of experts to help with the design of the new Terugploeg head office, cold rooms and equipment, as well as staff training.

That sounds fantastic. Back to Liberi this year. Does it happen in the same way as last year? That is, Saronsberg bottles an exclusive, limited edition wine and these are sold for the benefit of identified goodwill organisations. If so, how many bottles are produced of which wine? How does it work?The team of myself, Nick and Dewaldt from Saronsberg got together again to implement last year’s successful formula once more, but on a bigger scale. This year, because of the significant network of Atterbury Trust and Terugploeg, we asked Saronsberg to produce 10 000 bottles of Liberi wine. It is clearly an ambitious target to sell this kind of volume, but we are confident our community will once again step up to the plate in large numbers.

Saronsberg Liberi 2021 is an incredible 2017 Pinotage Reserve that liberates the palate and makes you feel great.

Our aim is to generate total donations to the value of R1.5m, of which Eskort contributes R500 000.

The labels this year feature truly incredible original figure studies created by the hugely talented Cape-based sculptor and painter Claudette Schreuders. Are these original works, or have they been adapted from existing art? How were they chosen? Why did you select this artist specifically?
I have three of Claudette’s lithography creations at home. Because Sam’s art worked so incredibly well as last year’s Liberi labels, we wanted to again choose an artist capable of producing simple yet striking visual imagery. I immediately thought Claudette’s style is perfectly in line with our vision. I simply contacted her and explained the project. She immediately provided us with free rights to use six of her art pieces as Liberi 2021 labels.

Prints of these works can be purchased at The Artist’s Press, artprintsa.com.