Best’s Great Western Thomson Family Shiraz 2020

Written By Campbell Mattinson
Bottle of Best’s Great Western Thomson Family Shiraz 2020.

Best’s Great Western Thomson Family Shiraz 2020
$250, 14% alcohol, screwcap, Great Western/Grampians.

We’ve covered a great many vintages of Best’s Thomson Family shiraz on The Winefront site.

Grampians shiraz at its best is never big or overly bold but that said, this release of Best’s fabled Thomson Family Shiraz – which was grown on vines that were, remarkably, planted in 1868 – is a wine of quite some substance. It tastes of black cherry into flame-grilled plum, cedarwood and mint, vanilla cream, potpourri and peppercorns, the latter edging gently into pure, cracked, black pepper territory. There are gentle notes of both undergrowth and leather running beneath the main stream of flavour and while tannin isn’t a key feature of the wine, there’s enough firmness here to lend the wine excellent shape. Thus wine will mature (well) for pretty much as long as you want it to. 94 points.

Campbell Mattinson

This post was written by Campbell Mattinson. Mattinson is a former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion book, former editor of Halliday magazine, former editor of Australian Sommelier Magazine and founder of The Winefront business. He is the author of five books on wine – four of which were bestsellers (The Wine Hunter, the Big Red Wine Book 2008, the Big Red Wine Book 2009, and the Big Red Wine Book 2010).

Mattinson is also the founder of the Mattinson Photography business.

Campbell Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer for forty years. He’s the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He’s a past winner of a Louis Roederer International Wine Media Award; is the author of the award-winning book The Wine Hunter; and is the author of the best-selling novel We Were Not Men. He’s also a winner of a St Kilda Film Festival Award (as writer-director) and is a former winner of the national Best Australian Sports Writing Award. In 2026 three of his photographs were short-listed for the World Food Photography Awards.

Campbell Mattinson, who is 100% independent, has tasted between 5000 and 10,000 wines each and every year for the past 25 years. He tastes blind, in comparative brackets, as often as is practicable.

Campbell Mattinson is a journalist, a photographer, a filmmaker and a wine critic. In all of these mediums his prime motive is to tell people's stories.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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