It's very easy to lose reputation by having the game generate a stack of impossible to finish orders demanding perfect end game wines with grapes at the end of the tech tree before you are even past the first few layers of research. Forcing you to deny them and lose reputation.
#The special order generator should only make orders that are at or near your research level.
raw crypt
scarlet wagon
It is true that the game starts too soon to give you special orders far ahead of your research level, but with good management and a fair bit of waiting, you can climb the reputation ladder pretty easily. Special orders eventually get renewed in block (one day you have certain 7 special orders and the next day you have a whole new set of them, regardless of the fact that some are very old and some are fairly recent)