After 22 years, Ronnie and Janet Verhorn of Harrison are to leave their vineyards which produce Pinotage, Chardonnay and Merlot wines.

Vineyards near Whittlesea are not only offering the future prospects of their fruit producing wines for the Eastern Cape for the first time, but also giving hope to a vision of the empowerment of locals and development of the area.

American missionaries Ronnie and Janet Vehorn of Harrison, a farm situated a kilometre outside the rural Eastern Cape town, planted the first vines on the farm in 2006. It is believed to be the first wine farm in the province.

Four years on, the vines have shown their first yield, encouraging the Vehorns to plant a further 6 000 vines in September last year. The latest vineyard, Emma's Plot, has been named after their first granddaughter, who lives in America.

The vineyards form part of a 22-year legacy which the Vehorns will leave behind as they complete 25 years of mission work in the area.

The Vehorns recently visited Cape Town to organise labels for the Pinotage, Chardonnay and Merlot wines currently being produced by the winery - but will be unable to market the wines until their application for licences, lodged on provincial and national level a year ago, are approved.

"As soon as we get these licences, this initiative can become a commercial venture and definitely have an impact as far as job creation is concerned."

Ronnie believes the capacity exists to create an estate wine, meaning that the process in producing the wine from the vine to the bottle, will be completed on the farm, and could yield up to 15 000 bottles of wine per annum.

"If we add the other two wines we are planning, Night Opus and Pilgrim Road Bin, these volumes will increase."

It's not been a journey without challenges as the Vehorns have had to contend with a few obstacles, including hungry duikers which were finally discouraged by netting wire erected around the vineyard.

The Vehorns have been involved in mission work in the Whittlesea area since 1988, have been instrumental in building a church at Tentergate and are currently looking at the construction of a hall as part of a 25-year plan to complete ‘physical' projects for the community, in additional to spiritual guidance provided. A house for a family of five in Tentergate is also being constructed under the eyes of the pair with Ronnie affectionately called ‘Khwaza' (he who shouts) in reference to his sermons.

What started as a personal interest in the wine-making process during visits to Western Cape wine farms in the early 1990s, soon blossomed into an initiative to establish vines locally and to train Whittlesea residents working on the farm, on how to make wine.

Ronnie reads extensively and, by his own admission, educated himself on the process. He's also had dealings with South Africa's Young Winemaker of 2009 Clayton Reabow of King William's Town and Peter Turk of Blueberry Farms near East London in garnering as much possible information on how to make wine - but he does not call himself a wine-maker, but instead "a monitor of the miracle."

"Our vision as missionaries has always been how to provide life more abundantly for rural Africa," Ronnie said, adding that the vineyards offered them the opportunity to not only leave behind a legacy when their work here was done, but to create a platform on which locals could build in creating a project which could be of great benefit to the development of the area.

"Wherever you travel around the world, you'll find that areas with vineyards seem to attract development - there'll be more accommodation, more arts, more culture, more eateries...it seems to just spark growth."

Harrison is set to be the site of wine-tasting evenings and weekends in the future in what Ronnie hopes will be an investment in the Eastern Cape and help to grow the tourism market, while it would also remain a base for young people wanting to assist with the development of the surrounding rural community.

So what's the secret of the success of Harrison, and hopefully the soon-to-be Harrison Hope wines, I ask Ronnie as we turn to go at the end of my visit to the farm on Monday.

He thinks for a moment and then says: "Just add faith."