1990 Hillside Select Cabernet Sauvignon
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Tasting notes
(13.5% alcohol; Doug Shafer refers to this wine as "the first vintage of the modern era"): Dark red with an amber rim. Very ripe aromas of plum, mocha, coffee and spices, complicated by a saline element that carries through onto the palate. Distinctly finer-grained than the earlier vintages, offering a pliant texture to its musky flavors of plum and roast coffee. Tannins are fully resolved. Drink up. Beginning with this vintage, the Hillside Select has been aged in 100% new French oak. Incidentally, Shafer noted that despite the cool summer in 1990, the team got the small crop riper than any vintage of the 1980s.
Critic scores
Average Score
Robert Parker
Robert Parker
More reviews and scores
Spicy, cedary, unsmoked cigar tobacco, blackcurrant, sweet cherry and vanillin notes are present in the 1990 Shafer Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select, along with loads of fruit, a monolithic, plump, rich, medium to full-bodied mouthfeel and a good finish.
Spicy, cedary, unsmoked cigar tobacco, blackcurrant, sweet cherry and vanillin notes are present in the 1990 Shafer Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select, along with loads of fruit, a monolithic, plump, rich, medium to full-bodied mouthfeel and a good finish. Dec 2014, www.robertparker.com
About the producer
The site of Shafer has been around since 1880, and grapes continued to be grown here, even during prohibition. It is said that some wine was made here during that time. In 1972, John Shafer bought the property in the Stag’s Leap district, he immediately began planting the Cabernet on the hillside.