Raka Wine

The wine was named after Raka, the beloved fishing boat of Piet Dreyer, proprietor of Raka wines. For more than three decades Piet has plied the seas of the southern ocean in search of the finest catch. The same passion has found home at Raka, where the Dreyer family now pursue the earth’s bounty for the creation of fine wines. 

With the rich blessing of earth and elements, the help of a dedicated workforce, the enthusiasm of winemaker Josef Dreyer and the advantages of a modern gravity flow cellar, Piet Dreyer produces his award-winning Raka wines.

Piet Dreyer was a fisherman all his life. As a child, when he was about 16 years old, his father was seriously injured in a motorcycle crash and he helped his mother to support the family by catching fish over weekends and after school on a friend’s fishing boat. The sea and fishing remained his passion and he grew from ski-boat owner to freezer-vessel owner and the “kaalvoet (barefoot) skipper” on his vessel Raka became well known amongst the squid fisherman. 

Because of the squid squirting black ink all over the boat, Piet decided to have himself a black freezer vessel built, so that he need not repaint that often, and called it RAKA. (From the Afrikaans poem by N.P. van Wyk Louw, about an African tribe being threatened by Raka, half man half beast and as black as the night). He took this name as his brand when he ventured, with equal passion, into winemaking – hence the slogan: born of the sea, guided by the stars, blessed by the earth.