JD
98
Jeb Dunnuck
JS
98
James Suckling
RP
98+
Robert Parker's The Wine Advocate
WS
94
Wine Spectator
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Shafer Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select 2017 - 1.5 Litre Bottle

Product description

This wine exhibits the structure and beauty that are the hallmarks of wines from the winery's location within Napa Valley's Stags Leap District. Aged nearly four years before release, this wine offers the pleasures of youthful boldness on release and rich nuance after a decade or more of bottling.

98 Points - Jeb Dunnuck

In the running for the wine of the vintage, the 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select is an incredible success. It offers more depth, opulence, and purity than every other wine. Revealing a dense purple colour and a killer nose of blueberries, chocolate-covered cherries, scorched earth, tobacco, violets, and exotic spices, it hits the palate with full-bodied richness, a seamless, pure, incredibly layered mouthfeel, building tannins, and a great, great finish. Like most top 2017s, it stays tight and compact on the palate, with notable structure and impressive concentration. It has some up-front appeal given its purity of fruit and balance, yet it will take 7-8 years to hit prime time and will be a long-lived bottle of Napa Cabernet. Hats to Doug Shafer and the team for yet another magical Cabernet Sauvignon!

98+ Points - Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

Made from 100% Cabernet Sauvignon, the 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select displays a deep garnet-purple colour, 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, the 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! 

98 Points - James Suckling

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 flavours. Firm, well-integrated tannins. Complex and refined with tremendous energy. One of the finest Hillside Selects I have had. Better from 2024.

94 Points - Wine Spectator

This drips with rich blackberry, boysenberry and raspberry fruit flavours and is liberally laced with licorice root and singed alder notes, delivering a nice tarry tug through the finish as the fruit drips. It shows a twinge of the vintage's rusticity in its tannins, but it's a heck of an effort in this tricky year. Best from 2023