Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
For a barrel sample, this is very pretty with bright fruit and firm tannins. Muscular structure in this, a very clean and gorgeous wine.
Barrel Sample: 92-93
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Wine Enthusiast
Aged in 100% new French oak, this 100% Cabernet is big, sweet and tannic. It’s offering little beyond exceptionally rich, ripe flavors of blackberries, black currants and dark chocolate. It’s almost like a Port wine whose high alcohol is an integral part of the package. Shows the dramatic flair of all Shafer’s red wines, but you might want to cellar it for 5–6 years.
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Wine & Spirits
This is a soft, layered, elegant Cabernet even as it delivers a bath of chocolate-rich tannins and juicy dark fruit. Somehow it manages to pack in plenty of alcohol and discretion at the same time, the combination reading as exotic spice. A cushy pleasure to serve with short ribs.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon One Point Five comes across as silky and seductive. Ripe red berries, flowers, mint and spices caress the palate in this understated, gracious wine. The 2009 impresses for its seamless texture and long, polished finish.
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Wine Spectator
Rustic, with a chewy edge to the loamy earth and cedar. The core currant and dark berry flavors are intense and concentrated, and this ends with chunky tannins. Fans of that rustic character will happily chew through this. Best from 2013 through 2022.
Shafer Vineyards has produced classic Napa Valley wines for more than 40 years.
Shafer’s wines, including its signature Cabernet Sauvignon, Hillside Select, are found in collectors’ cellars and on wine lists in top luxury hotels and restaurants throughout the world.
The vineyard and cellar teams, led by winemaker Elias Fernandez, cultivate more than 200 acres of Shafer-owned vineyards, sources for the winery's celebrated Red Shoulder Ranch Chardonnay, TD-9, One Point Five, Relentless, and Hillside Select.
The winery has a decades-long commitment to sustainability. Beginning in the 1980s Shafer embraced farming techniques that eliminate insecticides and herbicides, and carefully conserve water resources. In 2004 Shafer became the first winery in the U.S. to go 100% solar.
One of the most prestigious wines of the world capable of great power and grace, Napa Valley Cabernet is a leading force in the world of fine, famous, collectible red wine. Today the Napa Valley and Cabernet Sauvignon are so intrinsically linked that it is difficult to discuss one without the other. But it wasn’t until the 1970s that this marriage came to light; sudden international recognition rained upon Napa with the victory of the Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon in the 1976 Judgement of Paris.
Cabernet Sauvignon undoubtedly dominates Napa Valley today, covering half of the land under vine, commanding the highest prices per ton and earning the most critical acclaim. Cabernet Sauvignon’s structure, acidity, capacity to thrive in multiple environs and ability to express nuances of vintage make it perfect for Napa Valley where incredible soil and geographical diversity are found and the climate is perfect for grape growing. Within the Napa Valley lie many smaller sub-AVAs that express specific characteristics based on situation, slope and soil—as a perfect example, Rutherford’s famous dust or Stags Leap District's tart cherry flavors.