Shafer - Hillside Select Cabernet Sauvignon 2014
Price: $325.00
Producer | Shafer |
Country | United States |
Region | California |
Subregion | Napa Valley |
Varietal | Cabernet Sauvignon |
Vintage | 2014 |
Sku | 56337 |
Shafer Description
Shafer Vineyards is a 30,000 case winery in Napa Valley’s Stags Leap District managed by the father and son team of John and Doug Shafer. The Shafer family owns and farms 200 acres of vineyards, sources for Shafer’s Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Malbec, Merlot, Petite Sirah, and Syrah.
Hillside Select is a wine of a place, produced each vintage from carefully selected blocks of the hillside vineyards surrounding the winery. These grapes are small and deeply colored, with concentrated flavors enhanced by meticulous winemaking and extensive aging in French oak barrels. Hillside Select consistently expresses the voluptuous fruit, rich flavors and velvety texture that characterize grapes grown in Stags Leap District.
Vineyard Location: 100% Shafer’s Hillside Estate Vineyards in Stags Leap District including the vineyard blocks Sunspot, John’s Upper Seven, Venado Ilegal and Firebreak
2014 Growing Season: This was the third in a string of warm, sun-soaked vintages from spring through early autumn. The consistency of daytime heat and evening coolness created a model growing season in which we harvested fruit with abundant color and concentration, along with enticing, rich aromatics.
Winemaker Comments: “The 2014 vintage opens with an aromatic wave of deep, intense fruit and spices such as black plum, blackberry pie filling, cassis, and anise, along with nutmeg, dark toast, and dried rose petals. The energy in the nose is just as dramatic in the mouth with open, beautiful ripeness, mocha, briar fruit, pomegranate, baking spice, and ripe tannins that collectors will recognize as offering the promise of sensational things to come in the cellar." – Elias Fernandez
Wine Advocate: 98 Points
Very deep inky-purple colored, the 2014 Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select is incredibly intense and impactful on the nose, revealing notes of crushed black cherries, blackberries and fresh black currants with underlying notions of charcoal, sautéed herbs, black soil, chargrilled meat and pencil lead, plus a waft of violets. Very full-bodied, very rich and wonderfully concentrated, the wall of fruit is well matched by a firm structure of ripe, grainy tannins and plenty of freshness, finishing with great length and depth.
– Lisa Perotti-Brown
Vinous Media: 97 Points
The 2014 Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select is one of the more restrained, understated versions of this wine I can remember tasting. Medium in body (in relative terms) and beautifully persistent, the 2014 makes its case more with a total sense of harmony rather than with bombastic power, as is sometimes the case. Moreover, the 2014 has really come together beautifully since I last tasted it. In 2014, Hillside Select is a wine of precision, with expressive aromatics and finely-knit tannins that support the mid-palate and finish nicely.
-- Antonio Galloni
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