Bakkie Hengelaar

***Pre-order – Shipping Sept 8, 2026

A one-off wine rooted in a metaphor involving fishing and troublesome fermentations… How perfectly Cape Agulhas.

The year-round storms that visit this coastline are constantly canceling outdoor recreation plans. When the wind and the rain come, I used to be the first to put my bike away, hang the fishing rods up, and patiently wait for blue skies.

A classic sin of missing out on all the ‘good’ out there while awaiting the ‘perfect’.

When a winemaker nearby invited me to join him fishing from the rocks in the middle of an absolute monster of a storm a while back, I laughed, thinking he was joking.

He asked, “Haven’t you heard of a Bakkie Hengelaar?”

What was to follow has become one of my favourite winter activities in SA and has created some of the best memories. Driving for hours on little 4×4 routes down the coast, looking for that perfect spot to cast out. All of the best spots are wide open since most don’t head out during the storms. Even on the days when there isn’t a single bite, the whole process, experience, and time with good friends are what make it. Laughs, stories, and ideas are all shared.

One of those ideas, only a few months ago, has become this very wine.

With all of my wines relying on natural yeasts for fermentation, I run the risk of ferments slowing or stopping. This dilemma finally became reality on my latest Fumé Blanc. I had 1 barrel stop fermenting with 8g of sugar still in the wine. Almost nothing, but it simply wasn’t meeting the standard I have set for my Fumé Blanc.

For months, I did everything to try to get this ferment moving again. Nothing was working.

Then just a few weeks ago, sitting in the bakkie with that same winemaker friend, in the middle of a massive storm as we watch for movement on our rods that are cast out over the rocks, I told him I think I’m finally admitting defeat and this barrel is going to get dumped.

We chatted about the wine and all of the analysis. And then he asked me simply: “What does it taste like?”

My answer: It tastes like my Fumé which is why I hate to pour it out.

So when we brought our lines in that afternoon, we headed to the winery. Upon tasting the wine, my friend went back out to his bakkie and brought in a small box with probably 30 screwcaps in it.

He said “Certainly someone here will sell you some bottles. Here are a few screwcaps to get you started. I think you should bottle it.”

I’ve been weighing the idea for a few weeks now and it wasn’t until the parallel with wintertime bakkie angling struck me that I actually made the decision.

I bought a pallet of bottles and every old screwcap Lomond has and got to bottling.

This wine is not my Fumé Blanc. It has a very subtle sweetness on the finish. To be frank, it was not the wine I intended to produce.

But with my intentions aside, the wine is actually lovely. And it would have really been a shame to not share it.

So, please enjoy Bakkie Hengelaar – the barrel of Sauvignon Blanc that kept me up at night for almost a full year but ended up a delicious reminder that ‘perfect’ sometimes makes it hard to see all the great things around us.

1 barrel. 500 bottles. A variety of screwcap colours in every case. Enjoy FREE delivery on 2 or more boxes.