Red Still Wine | America | California | 75cl
£275.00
ABV: 15.5%
Size: 75cl
Closure Type: Cork
Country: America
Region: California
Wine Style: Full Bodied
Grape: Cabernet Sauvignon
Hillside Select is one of California’s greatest red wines. It is produced from carefully selected blocks surrounding the winery (The Sunspot, John's Upper Seven, Venado Illegal & Firebreak) exclusively in the Stags Leap District. 28 months in 100% new 60-gallon French oak barrels (Allier and Tronçais).
The 2021 Growing Season: 2021 was a Napa Valley classic offering long stretches of warm days and cool nights. By early September the fruit had developed rich color and elegant, pure aromas and flavors.
“The 2021 vintage expresses Hillside Select’s singular elegance, vibrancy, and balance. The aromas lift out of the glass, offering blackberry, cedar, black currant, and just-picked cherry with graceful floral and leather tones. The complexity of the vintage is striking, merging dark fruit with red plum, wet stone, lavender, and black tea. The ripe, seamlessly integrated tannins add depth, precision, and serious structure for decades of aging, all culminating in a long, exquisite finish.” — Elias Fernandez, Winemaker
DECANTER 99 points
Drinking Window: 2024 - 2050
Aged 32 months in 100% new French oak. It is quintessentially Stags Leap, with grapes grown on Shafer's famous Hillside estate vineyard, roughly 25ha, with very shallow volcanic tufa soils. It's a barrel selection of the very best blocks. A total of 2,900 cases were produced. Such a beautifully balanced wine with tremendous staying power and expressive Stags Leap ironstone minerality with heady sagebrush and conifer notes with white pepper and walnut husk. The wine has an impressive depth of red-toned fruit on the mid-palate framed by tannins that practically dance across the palate, exuding length, tension, and power. Huckleberry and black cherry fruits, black truffle, dried violets, graphite, and salted dark chocolate are all framed by racy acidity, which keeps everything fresh and lifted. The 2021 releases mark Elias Fernandez's 38th vintage as Shafer's winemaker. He was hired by John Shafer in 1984, two weeks out of UC Davis.
VINOUS 97-99 points
Drinking window: 2027 - 2041
The 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select is dark, vibrant and explosive. Black cherry, plum, mocha, lavender and cloves race across the palate. Medium in body, with tons of grip, the 2021 is shaping up to be a classic. It's another wine that shows a move towards a more restrained style, although there is certainly plenty of richness and textural depth. - Antonio Galloni. Tasting date: October 2022
