2021 Best's Hamill Shiraz, Great Western

Full ruby red colour. Blueberry, raspberry, vegetable stock and white pepper aromas. Medium to full, lively blue fruits with bunchy vegetable stock notes that bring savoury notes while white pepper and granite minerality offers other complexing factors. Tannins need a little more time to integrate but still allow the flow to carry long. Drink to 2037.

92 points Stuart Knox for The Real Review, February 2025

The 2021 Hamill Shiraz leads with gently dusty aromas of pressed flowers, mustard seed, mulberry, coal dust and caper brine. The fruit feels quite ripe, with plush overtones of raspberry, milk chocolate and licorice. It's more stocky/sturdy/strident than the Bin 0 that many will be familiar with. Drink to 2031.

90 points Erin Larkin for The Wine Advocate, March 2025

The Hamill Shiraz is made from fruit grown in three select blocks within the Sugarloaf vineyard acquired for Best’s in 2018. Located only a couple of kilometres from their Concongella vineyard, the 114-hectare site sits at a slightly higher elevation making it less prone to spring frosts.

Fruit is handpicked and fermented for up to 21 days with a significant 85% whole bunch inclusion, the balance being whole berries. Maturation takes place in French oak barriques for 14 months.

About this producer

Best's was established in 1866 at Concongella in Great Western, making it one of Australia's oldest continuously family-owned wineries. The Thomson family purchased the estate in 1920 and have been its custodians across five generations since. The Concongella vineyard holds some of Australia's oldest vines with Shiraz plantings dating to 1868, and Great Western's climate gives Best's wines a finesse and restraint that sets them apart from warmer Victorian regions.