Breaking 98: The first wine to score 99 points on Winemag
By Christian Eedes, 6 September 2025
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The Rall Wines Noa Syrah 2023, set to feature at this year’s Cape Winemakers Guild Auction, has become the first wine to breach the 98-point threshold on this site – proof that our scale can stretch right to the top end without devaluing 100 by casual overuse.
Why 99 and not 100?
South African wine has improved steeply in the modern era and there’s every reason to think it will continue to do so. To award 100 now would be to suggest we’ve reached the summit, when in fact the journey is ongoing. Hence the last point remains in reserve, powder kept dry.
Why this wine?
By any fair reckoning, Donovan Rall has ranked among South Africa’s top 10 producers for some time. Since his first release in 2008, his wines have combined technical precision with the ability to fire the imagination – the Noa Syrah 2023 feels like the fullest realisation of that approach so far.
My tasting note:
Massively aromatic with notes of black berries, orange, olive, liquorice, lavender, wilted rose, herbs, cured meat and pepper. Dense yet vital, rich without heaviness – flavour and texture of immense impact. Lemon-like acidity drives the wine while powdery tannins ensure a bone-dry finish. Its combination of aromatic range, structural precision and sheer vitality places it among the most complete expressions of Syrah yet seen from the Swartland. Alc: 12.7%.
What makes it extraordinary?
The Noa Syrah comes off the same broad vineyard area as Rall’s Syrah and Ava Syrah planted predominantly on schist. Planted in 2004, the site lies literally on the border between the Riebeekberg and Porseleinberg wards, though Rall opts for the simpler designation of WO Swartland, preferring to foreground the basic soil type.
The vineyard is effectively two vast blocks, ripening about a week to ten days apart, due to differences across soil, aspect and canopy. Noa and Ava come from opposite bottom sections; the “straight” Syrah, meanwhile, is a blend of both blocks.
Noa Syrah comes from a distinct section where clay is more prominent, and quartz abounds. It ripens last and yield is a mere one ton per hectare, the result being remarkable extract at low potential alcohol.
For the Noa 2023, 100% whole-bunch fermentation was used, followed by maturation in just two old 225-litre white wine barrels – a choice that lets the vineyard and variety speak without adornment. The aromatics are extraordinary but crucially, the palate lives up to them.
To discover the other Cape Winemakers Guild Auction 2025 wines to rate 95-plus, click here (subscribers only).
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Kwispedoor | 6 September 2025
I’d like to respectfully disagree with your thinking under the “Why 99 and not 100?” heading. Technically, that would mean you would score all actual 100-pointers lower than 100 now, because of where we are in history (and if we reach our summit in, say, 2032, you will score all actual 100-pointers after that at 99 and under).
I also don’t think you can say a 100-point score now would mean that we’ve reached the summit. It would quite simply mean that you’ve encountered a 100-point wine – even if it might be an outlier, compared to where it fits in history.
At the summit of our industry, there should be more 100-point wines, yes, but to say it’s the only time where 100-pointers belong, doesn’t make any sense to me. And what if our wine industry reaches its summit in 3025? Should there then be no 100-pointers for the next century? What about Zonnebloem Cabernet 1945, Chateau Libertas 1957, GS Cabernet 1966, etc? Is no wine worthy of a perfect score until “one day”?
I was always taught to “taste the wine in your glass”, meaning that one shouldn’t let any external factors influence the wine’s intrinsic value.
I have now tasted this wine, and it’s spectacular. Surely, it should get between 97 and 100 points from almost anyone who’s into fine wine. But whatever score it gets, that score should be defendable by quality standards alone.
Christian Eedes | 7 September 2025
Hi Kwispedoor, thanks for such a thoughtful and well-argued comment – it’s always a pleasure when the debate runs this deep.
There are points you raise that I look at differently. Firstly, scoring isn’t a simple matter of tallying up “intrinsic value” as if wine existed in a vacuum. A 100-point scale, like any critical system, is a human construct – it works because it’s applied with consistency and context. If critics were to hand out 100s whenever a wine felt exceptional in its moment, inflation would quickly make the score meaningless. Holding the last point in reserve is a way of keeping 100 special, not denying quality where it exists.
Second, the idea that giving a wine 100 doesn’t imply a summit is true in theory – but in practice, readers do interpret it that way. A 100 says “the standard has been set”. My position is that South Africa quality is still demonstrably ascending, and it would be premature to declare the peak reached when history suggests there’s more to come. That’s not to diminish the greats of the past (GS ’66 a case in point), but to acknowledge that that there was an unfortunate dip in quality in the ‘80s and ‘90s, that today’s wines are being made in a different context, and that an upward trajectory still lies ahead.
Moreover, I don’t entirely agree with you that we should simply taste what’s in the glass. Tasting critically means situating the wine in its broader frame of reference. That’s why the Noa Syrah 2023 earns 99: judged on its own merits, it’s magnificent; judged in the arc of South African wine, it represents just how high the ceiling now lies.
Jos | 7 September 2025
Hi Christian, couple of issues arise from your rebuttal.
Firstly, the idea that you seemingly cannot give a 100 point score while there is still growth in terms of quality implies that you can never give 100 points as there will likely always be room to improve as technology improves. I also begs the question: when and how will you decide what that point is upon us should it hypothetically happen? How long do you wait before you declare that the summit has been reached?
Let’s look at your journey to 99 points. The first 98 pointer that I can find was the 2018 Huilkrans. Since then, which is around 8 years, you have handed out 48 benchmark scores of 98. Based on your argument, you are suggesting that there were material improvements in winemaker in SA during that period which would nudge you over the 98 point mark during almost a decade until now. This brings me back to my question, how long do you wait before you declare that 100 points are now fair game as SA wines have peaked?
Secondly, I do agree that context outside of the glass could play a role in rating it, but that goes both ways. You are exclusively focusing on the future potential and thus room for growth. What about the past? Based on your argument of greater context, can a wine not deserve 100 points based on its past and how monumentally well it has improved over a period of time?
Lastly, I do not agree with your accretion that readers will view a 100 point wine as a summit never to be surpassed. There have been thousands of 100 point wines in the global wine industry. While people do compared 100 point wines, both the same wine across vintages and across different wines, I have yet to see people claim that we peaked decades ago when Robert Parker started handing out 100 point wines.
I do sympathise with your position of not wanting to inflate scores, but I do not agree with your reasoning.
Christian Eedes | 7 September 2025
Hi Jos, Wine scores aren’t physics equations, they’re gut-and-head calls dressed up in numbers. As such, they are slightly whimsical – if they weren’t, they’d be even duller than they already are.
As for 100, I don’t have a master plan. I just need to believe that what I’m calling the summit will feel like the summit to others opening the bottle. Hasn’t happened yet.
That said, I’m convinced SA’s best wines are still on the way up. No less, no more.
Jos | 7 September 2025
Fair enough, thanks.
GillesP | 7 September 2025
Any scoring points from Christian is his own taste. If you follow scorers and taste the same wines and at some point realise that your own taste can be very far away from the scorer, then it all mean absolutely nothing.
Vernon | 8 September 2025
To paraphrase Humpty Dumpty “Scores mean what I want them to mean, no more, no less”. When we work out which wine writers/critics have tastes similar to our own, we trust their judgements and don’t worry too much about the scores.
Bernard | 8 September 2025
Off topic, I must say it is confusing that Donovan has an Ava syrah and Noa chenin in the normal range and now a Noa Syrah for CWG.
Someone is going to get a surprise somewhere