Shafer Hillside Select

This is the quintessential Stags Leap Cabernet and scores consistently high marks in every vintage, with critics worldwide. This is one of our best sellers and for good reason. It’s routinely featured in the top dozen or so wines in every vintage according to Robert Parker. To add to that, we have some of the best prices on the worldwide market. Clients return to us again and again for their Hillside Select fix. There are very few wineries in California where you can say that the original winemaking staff are totally intact and have been, in this case, since 1978.

The GRW team tasted the 2004 Hillside Select a few weeks ago and it was a real treat. The amount of purity and richness that this wine possessed was unbelievable. Anyone who loves Napa Valley Cabernet needs to be drinking Hillside Select.

Think it over - in the first decade of the 21st century, Shafer scored three perfect scores and two 99s - "that's about as high a praise as I can give any producer in the world" Robert Parker 2014. We have a grand selection on offer below of some of the best wines produced at Shafer “Combine great winemaking with great viticulture and a special terroir, and this is the result. Readers are in the presence of genius when tasting this wine." Robert Parker 2015

"One of the world's great wines and profound expressions of Cabernet Sauvignon...year in year out, has been one of the most singular and profound examples of Cabernet Sauvignon in the world.” Robert Parker

Shafer Hillside Select is a rugged 54 acre vineyard that has virtually no top soil and lays on volcanic soil and bedrock. This is the the reason that Hillside Select is known for its complexity and concentration. Vines desperately searching for nutrients and water, which brings out characteristics that no other wine possesses. 

"Year in year out, this is one of the superstar wineries, not only in Napa Valley and all of California, but in the entire world." - Robert Parker

2001 Shafer Hillside Select

"The 2001 Shafer Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select is the first of these back-to-back perfect wines from Shafer that, at age 13, is still a baby, but, wow, what an amazing wine. A fabulous growing season produced a wine with inky/purple black color, stunning crème de cassis notes, with additional hints of lead pencil shavings, spring flowers, cedar wood and forest floor. It is full-bodied, sensationally concentrated, with a seamless integration of acidity, tannin, wood and alcohol. This is a great, monumental Napa Cabernet Sauvignon that is still an infant, at age 13, going on 14. This has got at least three decades of life left in it, and probably won’t hit its peak for another 5-7 years.  

Robert Parker, 100

2002 Shafer Hillside Select

"In contrast to the more linear, structured, but massive 2001, the 2002 Shafer Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select is pure fruit-bomb material, but stunningly proportioned, beautifully pure, with notes of melted chocolate, blackcurrant jam, sweet black cherries, licorice, camphor and charcoal. Very full-bodied, like the 2001, but much more lavishly fruited, it is more accessible and hedonistically, as well as intellectually, satisfying. If the 2001 is the long-distance runner, this comes across more like a middle-distancer. It had performed fabulously well since it was released by the winery, and even though it’s still an adolescent in terms of its evolution, this wine is a head-turner in wine tastings, and a spectacular effort from Napa"

Robert Parker, 100

2004 Shafer Hillside Select

"This vintage shocked me when I did my retrospective earlier this year, and the 2004 Shafer Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select acquitted itself brilliantly in the vertical of Hillside Selects. It was a hot year, a relatively early harvest and there were worries that the heat had stressed the grapes, and there would be a lack of physiological ripeness and nuance. Those worries have not manifested themselves in this great Cabernet Sauvignon. Inky/purple-colored with notes of blueberry, blackberry, cassis, spring flowers, and a touch of toast, the wine is opulent, voluptuous and full-bodied with sweet tannin, just enough acidity to provide freshness, vibrancy and delineation, and a spectacular finish that goes on 40+ seconds. "

Robert Parker, 99