diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 4c244780..4a0c3e7e 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -49,6 +49,10 @@ Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0.html).
   when supported by the file system. This speeds up the file coyping process
   while also reducing the amount of disk space used for yabridge when using
   Btrfs or XFS.
+- Print a more descriptive error message instead of panicing if running
+  `$WINELOADER --version` during yabridgectl's post-setup verification checks
+  does not result in any output. This is only relevant when using a custom
+  `WINELOADER` script that modifies Wine's output.
 
 ## [3.3.1] - 2021-06-09
 
diff --git a/tools/yabridgectl/src/utils.rs b/tools/yabridgectl/src/utils.rs
index cbb187b5..dbcc5455 100644
--- a/tools/yabridgectl/src/utils.rs
+++ b/tools/yabridgectl/src/utils.rs
@@ -262,7 +262,12 @@ pub fn verify_wine_setup(config: &mut Config) -> Result<()> {
         .stdout;
     // Strip the trailing newline just to make the config file a bit neater
     let mut wine_version = String::from_utf8(wine_version_output)?;
-    wine_version.pop().unwrap();
+    wine_version.pop().with_context(|| {
+        format!(
+            "Running '{} --version' resulted in empty output",
+            wine_binary
+        )
+    })?;
 
     let files = config
         .files()