Little William 2025

Little William is growing up. With the addition of a new vineyard called “Ankerblok”, the trajectory of the wine is changing slightly. Today we are releasing the 2025 vintage - The future for Little William.

This wine now combines fruit from the original Shiraz vineyard, “Rivierblok”, with fruit from the newly established “Ankerblok” (read the story below). And because of that, you can expect a shift. More feminine, more defined and more spicy. A shift in exactly the direction we hoped for.

Establishing “Ankerblok - THE STORY

(please note, I am name dropping here but it's super important to give thanks to all the roleplayers -  it takes a village!)

During COVID, Francois Hanekom, Jaco Engelbrecht and myself embarked on one of the most exciting projects of my career: designing a vineyard from the ground (roots) up.

I don't own land, which means I may never have the opportunity to develop and plant a vineyard on soil that is my own. So when Marguerite MacDonald gave me the go-ahead to expand Little William on her husband Dugald’s family farm in the Koue Bokkeveld, Ceres, I knew this was the opportunity of a lifetime.

During those COVID years, Francois, Oom David Saayman and I spent hours submerged in holes, assessing soil profiles while the snow-topped mountains surrounded us. Like Oom David said in his own words after his first visit: “hier slaap ‘n haas wat ek nie ken nie”. Oom David, after all, literally wrote the book on South African soils. Marguerite dubbed the vineyard as “Ankerblok”, referring to an old stone fence anchor in the vineyard.

In equal measure, Jaco, Francois and I spent days upon days analysing radiation levels, elevation, exposure, proximity to the ocean, and every other factor that could influence style. Our goal was simple: getting to know every piece of the land - what to plant where?

By 2022, we presented the final vineyard plan to Marguerite's team, and the baton was handed over. The agreement was simple. We provided the software; they provided the hardware being the vines, poles, irrigation, labour and everything required to turn a vision into reality.

Dirkie, Petrus Nel, Roy Jeffries and 30 muscle men took charge. As the vineyards moved towards their first crop, John took over from Dirkie, and together with Petrus, supported by Francois, Jaco and myself, an enormous amount of time was invested driving back and forth, training teams, implementing systems and fine-tuning every detail of vineyard management.

Then came 2025. A banger of a year when it comes to quality.

And so, with the addition of the Ankerblok vineyard to the original Rivierblok, the trajectory of Little William changed a bit - this is the future of Little William.

The style is becoming more defined. More feminine. More spicy. A touch of Old World character combined with South African elegance and sunshine.

When you combine a remarkable vintage with an epic site - something special happens.

In the cellar, we have also gradually transitioned the wine into the finest European oak casks we could source. The result is not oak for the sake of oak, but rather another layer of excitement — the glue that binds every piece of “lekkerte” together. The 2025 offers a glimpse into what Little William can become.

This wine is a great example of what Shiraz at 750 m above sea level can do. The wine is named after my chance meeting with a little boy called William on the Witzenberg mountains. It’s been a fascinating story from the start, but became even more bizarre at the end of last year, with another chance meeting.

The Story:

In January 2016, I was driving back from a tiny little vineyard in the Koue Bokkeveld (Ceres Plateau). Cruising along at the 100km/h speed limit, I came to a very winding stretch of road leading towards the Witzenberg pass. Suddenly, for a split second, I thought I saw something in the middle of the road. I had just come through a super sharp bend and had to jump on the brakes with both feet. When I finally got my 470 000-km-on-the-clock Toyota to stop, there, on the white line in the middle of the road, stood a little blonde boy.

I guessed him around a year and a half old. He was in his nappies and had a white T-shirt on, perfectly camouflaged on the white line. Unsure of what to do once I'd taken him out of the road, I thought it a good plan to prompt him and see which direction he takes off in (with myself of course right behind).  

About 200 meters further along the road he (we) crossed a little bridge heading towards the other side of the canal. He turned up a dirt road which led to a farmhouse about 300 meters up a hill. Keeping up to his snail-like pace, we arrived at the house more or less 10 minutes later (in my experience with farm dogs, it wouldn’t have been wise to carry him). When the gardener saw us approaching, he called out to a woman at the house and judging by her reaction, she must’ve been his mom and he must’ve been missing for a while.   It was a bit of an emotional and chaotic environment so, knowing he was safe, I just turned around and left without introducing myself.  

So each time I present a tasting with Little William wine as part of the line-up, I get the same question: “Why is it called, Little William?”, followed almost without fail by: “What does the family have to say about you calling a wine, Little William?” My answer is always the same: “I never went back, they don't even know the wine exists. But I am convinced there will be this one day where I’d be sitting at some local bar in Knysna, drinking a beer all by myself when the young guy next to me turns to me and introduces himself as William from Ceres." And I’ll be able to tell him: “Eendag, lank, lank gelede het hierdie oom jou lewe gered!”  

For 4 years I had the privilege of telling the story of little William. Until last year. When Chapter 2 happened.   In November, we took our youngest son for a minor operation at Panorama Mediclinic, Tygerberg, Cape Town. The lady at reception looked at us with a puzzled look on her face. We later learnt that there had been a mistake on the paperwork and they were under the impression that he was an adult. They had subsequently booked him into an adult ward. The man next to him had drunk a cup of coffee at 6:00am that morning with milk in. His operation therefore had to be postponed and he obviously missed his theatre time slot. He had to wait almost the whole day for the next slot. He and Sebastian eventually left for the theatre at more or less the same time.

I went to get us a cup of coffee, and as she always does, Aneen started making conversation with the milk-in-the-coffee guy’s wife. On my return Aneen said: ”They are from Ceres, tell her the little William story.” I cringed, thinking: "Why would I do that??" I tried to let her comment slide and filled the awkward silence with useless words. We carried on with the small talk and she ended up telling us that she is a vet and her husband is a farmer. “Where do you farm in Ceres?”, I asked. “In the Witzenberg mountains, on a farm called Blah-blah-blah”, she answered.   And, as you’ve probably guessed by now, that was the name of the farm where I dropped little William that morning.

It started dawning on me that it might be my Knysna-bar-thing moment happening in a totally bizarre, different way. “Do you have a son called William?” I asked. “No”, she replied, “but my nephew is called William and they live on the same farm, in the house next to the road.” We did the sums and he would’ve been exactly 1 and a half years at the time. So it turns out it wasn't a beer-in-hand pub in Knysna, but a coffee-in-hand hospital in Cape Town. I should've listened to Aneen right from the start... so I told her the whole story and she phoned her sister-in-law. “Did you ever lose William on the farm?” she asked (I don’t think that’s the type of story you volunteer to tell your extended family if not prompted). “Yes”, she said. “There was this one day…”