Since Tim Atkin MW began publishing his South Africa Special Report, only a handful of wines have ever earned his perfect score. In his 2023 report, after tasting over two thousand wines from more than four hundred producers, exactly one wine reached 100 points. It came from our small family cellar in Stellenbosch.
Our flagship Epilogue.
That score matters for reasons that go beyond a number on a label (you’ll understand why).
Tim Atkin is one of the most credentialled wine critics writing today.
A statement from winemaker Reenen Borman:
“Tim’s palate and advocacy have been instrumental in elevating South African wine on the global stage. His unwavering commitment to our industry sets the standard for what passionate expertise looks like.”
His South Africa report has become the benchmark for how the Cape’s wines are judged internationally.
When he calls a wine perfect, importers, collectors, and sommeliers around the world pay attention.
For us, a family-run estate that has been making wine since 1996, our Epilogue 2021 vintage reaching 100 points was proof, from one of the most demanding judges in the industry.
We are proud that a small-batch, site-driven approach can compete with anything in the world.
This article explains who Tim Atkin is, how rare a 100-point score actually is.
We’ll share what happened with our Epilogue specifically, and why a rating like this matters more for a boutique cellar than it might for a large commercial producer.
TL;DR
- Tim Atkin MW is a British wine journalist and Master of Wine (since 2001) whose annual South Africa Special Report is one of the most influential wine reports on the country.
- In his 2023 South Africa Special Report, Boschkloof Epilogue 2021 scored a perfect 100 points, the only red wine to do so that year and reported as the fifth South African wine ever to reach that mark in the report’s history. Atkin named it his Red Wine of the Year.
- A 100-point score from Tim Atkin is exceptionally rare. Of the 2,206 wines he tasted for that report, only one reached a perfect score.
- Epilogue’s high scores are not a one-off. The 2017 vintage scored 99 points, and the 2023 vintage scored 99 points in Atkin’s 2025 report, showing consistency across vintages rather than a single lucky year.
- Epilogue also holds a five-star rating from Platter’s, South Africa’s own wine guide, and is released in small, allocation-only quantities each April.
Who is Tim Atkin, and why does his opinion carry weight?
Tim Atkin passed the Master of Wine examination in 2001, at his first attempt, and won the Robert Mondavi Award for the best theory paper in that year’s sitting.
The Master of Wine qualification is one of the hardest credentials in the wine trade to earn.
Fewer than five hundred people worldwide hold it, and the exam covers viticulture, winemaking, business, and blind tasting to a standard few professionals ever reach.
Atkin has spent close to four decades writing about wine for publications including Harpers, Decanter, and The World of Fine Wine.
In addition, he has also previously done so for The Observer and The Times.
He has won (among many others) the Glenfiddich Wine Writer of the Year award five times and the Louis Roederer International Wine Columnist of the Year award.
He also co-chairs the International Wine Challenge.
This is one of the largest blind-tasting competitions in the world, and chairs the judging panel for the “South African Top 100”.
His full background and tasting archive are published on timatkin.com. We encourage you to head over there to learn more about Tim and his background.
Since 2013, Atkin has published an annual South Africa Special Report, tasting thousands of wines from hundreds of producers each year!
He scores them on the same 100-point scale used by other reputable critics, such as Robert Parker and Wine Spectator.
The report has become one of the most closely watched pieces of wine journalism published about South Africa.
A strong score in Atkin’s report reaches an audience of collectors, importers, and sommeliers that a small estate could never reach on its own.
How rare is a 100-point score, really?
On a 100-point scale, anything above ninety is considered excellent by most critics.
Not to mention a score in the mid-nineties is treated as exceptional as well.
A perfect one hundred is different in kind, not just degree!
What does this mean in wine terms?
The critic found nothing to fault: fruit, structure, balance, length, and ageing potential all came together at once, in a single vintage, in a single barrel selection.
In Atkin’s 2023 South Africa Special Report, he tasted 2,206 wines from 419 producers.
Of those, 201 scored above 95 points, which he describes as his equivalent of a gold medal.
Only one reached a perfect 100, which he described in the report itself as “the fifth to enjoy such an accolade.”
That single wine was Boschkloof Epilogue 2021, which Atkin also named his Red Wine of the Year.
Put in context (reaching this benchmark represents a significant accomplishment), that is one perfect score out of more than two thousand wines tasted across the entire country’s (South Africa’s) wine industry in a single year.
Boschkloof Epilogue’s 100-point moment
Epilogue is our flagship wine: a single-vineyard Syrah grown on the granite soils of the Polkadraai Hills, released in strictly limited quantities each April.
Members of our Boschkloof Loyalty Club are given first access.
It is not a wine we made to chase a score.
We make it the way we make the rest of our range, working the same specific piece of ground since 1996.
When the 2021 vintage of Epilogue reached 100 points in Atkin’s 2023 report, it was described as the only red wine to reach the perfect mark that year.
That distinction matters.
Ninety-five-plus scores at the very top of a report are often split between a handful of exceptional whites and one or two standout reds.
Having a red wine claim the single perfect score, out of a set that included the country’s most established producers, is a meaningful result.
Adding to this, it was also not a one-off.
The 2017 vintage of Epilogue scored 99 out of 100 from Atkin, reported at the time as the highest-scoring wine in that year’s report.
The 2023 vintage scored 99 points again in Atkin’s 2025 South Africa Special Report.
Seen together, these results show a wine that performs at the very top of its category vintage after vintage, not a single exceptional year that happened to land at the right moment.
Our Epilogue also carries a five-star rating from Platter’s South African Wine Guide, the country’s own long-standing reference guide.
This establishes validation from both an international and a local benchmark.
Why a rating like this matters for a family cellar
For a large commercial producer, an outstanding critic score is good marketing.
For a family-run, single-estate cellar making a few thousand bottles of its flagship wine each year, it is closer to independent proof of something the family has believed the whole time: that site, soil, and patient winemaking matter more than scale.
Jacques Borman founded Boschkloof in 1996, and is now run alongside his son, Reenen Borman (with three families involved across more than thirty years).
There is no marketing department deciding what story to tell about our Epilogue.
There is a winemaking family, working a specific piece of Polkadraai ground, and a critic with no reason to be generous tasting the result blind alongside more than two thousand other wines. One reviewer summed it up plainly: we pour some of the best Syrah in South Africa, a sentiment we hear from visitors to our cellar door as often as from critics.
That is also why a rating like this tends to matter more to the two kinds of people who buy Boschkloof wine.
- Established collectors already follow reports like Atkin’s closely, use them to decide what goes into a cellar, and treat a score like this as confirmation they are buying correctly.
- Newer, more aspirational buyers may not follow wine critics at all.
A headline like “one of five South African wines ever to score 100 points” is an easy, credible way to understand that a bottle is worth taking seriously.
That makes a statement without needing to already know the scoring conventions of the wine trade.
What is actually in the bottle
Ratings aside, Epilogue is worth understanding as a wine in its own right.
It is built almost entirely around fruit from our Syrah blocks on the Polkadraai Hills.
- Where granite-derived soils and the cooling influence of False Bay produce grapes.
- With real freshness alongside ripeness.
- A combination that has become the signature of the best modern South African Syrah.
Expect black pepper, violet, and a mix of red and dark fruit on the nose, with the kind of structure and length that explains why the wine ages well rather than needing to be drunk young.
It sits within a small range. Our other reds include Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot, and Kottabos, a Grenache and Syrah blend, alongside Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, and a blended white.
Epilogue is the wine that sits above all of them, released once a year in a run small enough that most vintages sell out to Loyalty Club members before they are ever listed publicly.
How to get hold of our Epilogue
Given the size of each vintage (very limited) and the attention a result like this draws, allocation-only wines of this kind tend to move quickly once they are available (released once a year, typically in April).
Joining our Loyalty Club is the most reliable way to be notified when the next vintage opens for order, and it also carries member specials across the rest of our range.
FAQs
What does a 100-point wine score actually mean?
A 100-point score is a critic’s way of saying they found nothing to fault in the wine, weighing fruit quality, balance, structure, complexity, and ageing potential together. It is the top of the same 100-point scale used by most major wine critics internationally, and reaching it is rare even among wines that already score in the mid-nineties.
How many South African wines have scored 100 points from Tim Atkin?
According to Atkin’s own reporting, Boschkloof Epilogue 2021 was the fifth South African wine in the history of his South Africa Special Report to reach a perfect 100-point score, out of thousands of wines tasted across more than a decade of annual reports.
Is Boschkloof Epilogue rated by other critics besides Tim Atkin?
Yes. Our Epilogue also holds a five-star rating from Platter’s South African Wine Guide, the country’s own long-running wine reference, giving it recognition from both an international critic and South Africa’s domestic guide.
Does every vintage of Epilogue score this highly?
Not every vintage reaches 100 points, but the wine has scored at or near the top of Atkin’s reports consistently: 99 points for the 2017 vintage, 100 points for the 2021 vintage, and 99 points for the 2023 vintage, across separate reports published years apart.
How can I buy Boschkloof Epilogue?
We release Epilogue once a year in strictly limited quantities, with our Loyalty Club members given first access before general release. Joining our Loyalty Club is the best way to be notified when the next vintage becomes available. Shipping is within South Africa only.
Is Epilogue available to taste at the cellar door?
Yes, subject to availability of the current vintage. Our tasting room is open Monday to Friday, nine in the morning to five in the afternoon, and closed on weekends and public holidays.
What a perfect score proves about a small cellar
A 100-point score from a critic of Tim Atkin’s standing is not the point of making wine at Boschkloof, but it is useful proof of something we have always believed about our estate: that a small, family-run cellar working one piece of Polkadraai ground can produce a wine that stands against the best in the country, judged blind, without any advantage of scale or marketing budget. Our Epilogue’s run of scores across three separate vintages suggests that this was not a single good year but a genuinely well-made wine, made the same deliberate way, release after release.
If that is the kind of wine you want in your own cellar, join our Loyalty Club for first access when the next vintage of Epilogue is released, or shop our current range of reds and whites.