2017 is the first vintage that we’ve bottled something from Oudam farm as a stand-alone wine. We’ve been working with the Visser family since 2011 and have been planning this wine since 2015.

They chose the name Huilkrans, the name of a cliff on the farm that weeps when it rains. Since the untimely passing of their son Kallie in 2017, the name now has an unintended double meaning. Even so, they’ve elected to keep it unchanged. The label pays homage to Kallie. In fact, he was largely responsible for farming the great 2017 vintage.

There is something so very special about this place in the mountains – isolation, old vines, low rainfall, deep red sand over red clay. If Magnetic North is the tenor voice of Skurfberg, then Huilkrans must be the deeper baritone. It works on a lower, richer frequency, but still unmistakably from this great appellation.