Professional Ratings

• 100 Wine Enthusiast
  A perfect score has to be considered in the context of its region. Shafer's 2004 Hillside Select is tremendous as a Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon that competes with its peers at the highest levels. It's always a fabulous wine, but in warm 2004, Shafer's amphitheater vineyard sheltered the grapes, ripening them to perfection yet protecting the "iron fist in a velvet glove" structure that Andre Tchelistcheff defined as Stags Leap. This 100% Cabernet is tremendous in cassis, black currant and mocha flavors, and the 100% new French oak provides perfect additions of smoke and caramel. It's soft and gorgeous enough to drink now, and should age well in a cool cellar for the next 20 years.
• 99 Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
  This vintage shocked me when I did my retrospective earlier this year, and the 2004 Shafer Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select acquitted itself brilliantly in the vertical of Hillside Selects. It was a hot year, a relatively early harvest and there were worries that the heat had stressed the grapes, and there would be a lack of physiological ripeness and nuance. Those worries have not manifested themselves in this great Cabernet Sauvignon. Inky/purple-colored with notes of blueberry, blackberry, cassis, spring flowers, and a touch of toast, the wine is opulent, voluptuous and full-bodied with sweet tannin, just enough acidity to provide freshness, vibrancy and delineation, and a spectacular finish that goes on 40+ seconds. This is a killer, a showy and flamboyant style of Hillside Select...
• 96 Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

  Showing a bit of bricking at the rim, the 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select is a strong effort, although not perhaps the equal to the 1994 (also tasted on this occasion). Dried cherries and leather on the nose are joined by flavors of caramel, baked fruit and cherry compote on the full-bodied palate.

• 95 Wine & Spirits
  Hillside Select has come to define Stags Leap District cabernet; it's a luxury wine that still bears the reality of its place, in this case, a series of small knolls beneath the palisades at Napa Valley's eastern edge. Elias Fernandez coaxes a deliciously ripe wine from those hills, a combination of bright cherry and high-toned florals with bass notes that deepen to the marbled fatty richness of a grilled rib eye. It's dark, succulent and mouthwatering cabernet, hard to resist.
• 94 Wine Spectator
  Pure, rich, intense and vibrant, with tight, sharply focused, vivid black cherry, blackberry and black currant fruit that has a nice dusty, loamy edge and ends with a pleasant burst of ripe fruit flavors that are long and persistent.