Best's Great Western Shiraz Bin 0

Wine information: Best’s has been producing wine in the Great Western wine region of Victoria for over 140 years. Only 2 families have owned Best’s since it was founded – wines were first made by the Best family in 1866 and the estate was bought by the Thomson family in 1920. For the past 50 vintages fourth generation vintner Viv Thompson has been in charge of crafting Best’s wines, taking the “best” of modern innovation and blending it with tradition to arrive at wonderfully balanced and distinct Aussie wines. Best’s is now run by Viv’s son, Ben Thomson, the fifth generation of the Thomson family. The headquarters of Best’s is located at Concongella very close the Great Western and “Salvation Hills” at Rhymney. The unique terroir at Great Western contributes to the success of Best’s - the land along the Concongella creek is flat with powdery loam overlaying a deep clay sub-soil while newer plantings are sited on frost free hills. A long, slow-ripening period and continental climate are characteristics of Great Western. Shiraz has been produced at Best’s Great Western since the late 1800s, although the actual date of the first ‘Bin 0’ Great Western Shiraz is lost in the annuals of time. What is certain is that Best’s Bin 0 Shiraz is generally produced from Best’s oldest plantings and selected from the lowest yielding blocks of the historic Concongella vineyard at Great Western. This includes nineteenth century and mid twentieth century plantings of Shiraz which result in very low yielding, intense vines. The fruit is hand-selected, sorted and fermented in small-batches followed by rigorous barrel selection. Bin 0 is made to be an age worthy style and has been the undisputed icon of the Great Western Shiraz style for many decades. It is internationally acclaimed as one of Australia’s finest Shiraz wines. The Bin 0 is a fruit driven, powerful yet elegant Shiraz, abundant in dark forest fruits. The label design is almost an exact replica of Henry Best’s 1800’s label.

Food & Wine match: Great with very hearty, robust spicy dishes.  However for a change, try with lamb spiced with black and green olives and mustard.

Reviews: “ Best’s Bin O Shiraz is sourced from four low yielding Concongella Shiraz blocks established in 1966, 1970, 1992 and 1994. Vinification takes place in open stainless steel fermenters. The wine is matured in a combination of 1/3 new and one and two year old French and American oak (barriques and puncheons) for around 12 months. In a declassified year some Thomson Family fruit (from some of the oldest Shiraz plantings in Victoria) can be included. Viv Thomson – 4th generation winemaker – believes that there are two types of wines, “talking wines and drinking wines”. This is a happy blend of both. It has intense mulberry blackberry aromas, background oak and loose-knit gravelly tannins developing further complexity with medium term cellaring.” Ref: Langton’s classified as "Distinguished".

"There’s a surprisingly elevated amount of vanillin oak here but if you give it time to breathe it settles into the wine nicely. It’s beautifully textured, perfectly ripe, washed with drying, leathery tannin and juicy-to-the-point-of-citrussy (and indeed floral) through the aftertaste. Plums, mint, redcurrant and leather - that’s the flavour profile. I was unsure of it at first but the longer I sat with it the more I admired." Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front, Dec 2008 "Very closed and slow to emerge, this old-fashioned, finely balanced and very stable shiraz certainly needs time in the cellar. Its deep, minty expression of blackberries, dark plums, currants and dark chocolate overlies spicy notes of clove and nutmeg, with a whiff of menthol. Supported by a very fine-grained and dusty spine of firm tannin, it gradually unfolds a penetrative array of dark fruit and a slightly awkward oak extract that needs time to integrate." Jeremy Oliver, Apr 2008

 
     

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