Hillside Select is made of 100 percent Cabernet Sauvignon fruit sourced from rugged hillside vineyard blocks on our Stags Leap District Estate. Truly a “wine of a place,” this Cabernet exemplifies the extraordinary richness and suppleness consistently produced in our little valley within a valley.
Hillside Select is aged a full four years prior to release (three years in Alliers and Tronçais oak barrels and one year in the bottle). While enjoyable today, this wine will gain richness and maturity with up to 20 years of careful cellaring.

ROBERT PARKER RATING: 94

ROBERT PARKER REVIEW: At the top of this estate's qualitative hierarchy are their Cabernet Sauvignons. The 1993 Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select is an outstanding wine that is close in quality to the 1992 and 1991. The 1993 boasts an opaque purple color, as well as a sweet, smoky nose of licorice, blackcurrants, minerals, and vanillin. Huge, rich, and full-bodied, with fabulous concentration and extract, but harder tannin than the 1992 or 1994, this is a large-scaled, well-balanced, powerful Cabernet Sauvignon to drink between 2000-2020. Readers may remember my previous lavish reviews of the Hillside Select Cabernet Sauvignons. These wines have always been high class, but the quality level since 1991 has pushed Shafer's Hillside Select into an elite grouping of two dozen or so California Cabernet producers. There are 2,000-2,400 cases made of these rich, ageworthy Cabernets. Another of Napa's finest wineries, Shafer has taken full advantage of a succession of superlative vintages during the nineties, producing a powerful portfolio of brilliant wines. Since 1991, just about everything emerging from Shafer Vineyards has been high on buyers' lists. All things considered, Doug and John Shafer are at the top of their game.