2010 Shafer Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select
Market price
Buying options
Tasting notes
In comparison to the more lavish, sexy 2002, the 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select is more structured and focused, with incredible purity in its cassis and darker currant fruits as well as complex notes of minty herbs, lead pencil shavings, licorice, graphite, and spring flowers. Reminding me of a great vintage of Château Mouton Rothschild with its concentration, structure, and balance, it’s just now at the early stages of its prime drink window, and it will continue to improve for another decade and hold for 20-25 years thereafter.
Critic scores
Robert Parker
The Wine Advocate
More reviews and scores
Wild blackberries and brambleberries on the nose with raw cocoa, cloves and crushed gravel. Violets and orange peel, too. It’s medium-bodied with wonderful purity and depth of fruit, interlaced with dark-chocolate flavors. Firm, well-integrated tannins. Complex and refined with fantastic energy. One of the finest Hillside Selects I have had.
Made from 100% Cabernet Sauvignon, the 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select displays a deep garnet-purple color, bursting from the glass with scents of blueberry pie, crème de cassis, black cherry compote and chocolate box plus nuances of cedar chest, clove oil, lavender and menthol. The richly fruited, full-bodied palate has a lively skip in its step, featuring gorgeous ripe, velvety tannins and fantastic freshness to support all the spicy black fruit layers, finishing long and perfumed. An absolute triumph! (LPB) 98+
Very pure if subdued aromas of blackcurrant, black cherry, dark chocolate and minerals; conveys a strong Stags Leap terroir character. Enters the mouth voluptuous, broad and seamless but still youthful, showing a faintly inky reserve to its powerful dark fruit, licorice and mineral flavors. This Napa Valley masterpiece is developing at a snail's pace. The finish goes on and on, with substantial fine-grained, toothcoating tannins in perfect balance with the wine's fruit. Wonderfully sweet and voluminous but not excessively so, as there's so much else going on here. This wine was only a tad more developed than a spectacular sample I tasted as part of a vertical tasting I did at the estate in 2016. A great vintage for Shafer. (ST)
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.