Winemaker Notes
The 2022 Relentless offers an exquisite balance of concentration with elegance. Layers of juicy black plum, wild berry compote, and black licorice exhibit complexity and tension with crushed stone, garrigue, and sage brush. Ideal ripeness and racy acidity add lift to its core. Richly pleasurable now, this vintage will evolve magnificently over the next 20 – 30 years.
Blend: 90% Syrah, 10% Petite Sirah
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Powerful and compact with aromas of blackberry liqueur, dark plums, smoked meats, peppercorn and graphite. Full-bodied and deeply structured with dense dark fruit, savory spices and muscular tannins that build across the palate. Intense and age-worthy with a long, powerful finish. Made from 90% syrah and 10% petite sirah. Best from 2030.
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Vinous
The 2022 Relentless is another superb wine from Shafer in this brutally challenging year. Deep and explosive to the core, the 2022 is seriously impressive. There's a center of strength here that is palpable. Dark red/purplish fruit, lavender, cloves and blood orange all build into the deep, resonant finish. This is so impressive.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Harvested early in the heat, the 2022 Syrah Relentless (90% Syrah and 10% Petite Sirah) is ripe and juicy, with other red and black fruits, peppery herbs, violets, spice, and incense-like aromas and flavors. This richly textured, full-bodied 2022 has sweet, velvety tannins and a great finish.
Range: 92-94 -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Still in barrel, the 2022 Relentless is a co-fermented blend of 90% Syrah and 10% Petite Sirah. It shows some of the effects of the early September heat wave in its notes of baked blackberries combined with hints of menthol and white pepper on the nose, while the full-bodied palate is silky but firm, finishing with a tart edge. Barrel Sample: 91-93
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Wine Spectator
Ripe and lush, this red offers ample savory elements of dried violet, cured meat and wild herbs to comple- ment the hibiscus-accented berry and plum center, while spiced chocolate notes fill out the broad finish. Syrah and Petite Sirah.
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.
Undoubtedly proving its merit over and over, Napa Valley is a now a leading force in the world of prestigious red wine regions. Though Cabernet Sauvignon dominates Napa Valley, other red varieties certainly thrive here. Important but often overlooked include Merlot and other Bordeaux varieties well-regarded on their own as well as for their blending capacities. Very old vine Zinfandel represents an important historical stronghold for the region and Pinot noir is produced in the cooler southern parts, close to the San Pablo Bay.
Perfectly situated running north to south, the valley acts as a corridor, pulling cool, moist air up from the San Pablo Bay in the evenings during the hot days of the growing season, which leads to even and slow grape ripening. Furthermore the valley claims over 100 soil variations including layers of volcanic, gravel, sand and silt—a combination excellent for world-class red wine production.