2022 Shafer Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select
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Tasting notes
Beautifully done, with a non-2022-like level of freshness and purity, the 2022 Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select reveals blackcurrant, spice, flowers, subtle chocolate, and graphite that all develop nicely with time in the glass. It's medium to full-bodied on the palate and has a pure, layered mouthfeel, ripe tannins, and a great finish. This incredibly successful 2022 can be drunk any time over the coming two decades. Drink 2025-2044.
Critic scores
Antonio Galloni, Vinous
Jancis Robinson MW
More reviews and scores
The 2022 Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select is very clearly one of the wines of the vintage. Sleek, silky and polished to the core, the 2022 impresses with its exceptional balance and finesse. Blood orange, red plum, mocha, spice, cedar and new leather are some of the many notes that take shape in the glass. The 2022 is a bit light in textural feel, as intense heat blocked ripening. Longtime winemaker Elias Fernandez certainly got the best this challenging vintage had to offer.
Shafer's big kahuna, the 2022 Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select, was presented as a barrel sample in August 2025. Black cherries and cassis are framed by cedar and vanilla-inflected oak, giving this wine a slightly monolithic bouquet right now. It's full-bodied, dense and concentrated but still boasts the signature Stags Leap District texture to its suede-like tannins, which linger elegantly on the finish.
Full bottle 1,412 g. Aged 28 months in 100% new French oak. Inky purple. Rich, lurking black fruit. Thick and chewy tannin with enough acid to balance but a slightly raisined oak-spiced finish. Not the best vintage of this wine that I've seen. Still, more structured and ageworthy than the One Point Five.
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.