Winemaker Notes
The 2022 Hillside Select opens with generous aromatics, poise, and elegance. Hailing from a true Mediterranean vintage, the balance of opulence and freshness is striking with vibrant aromas and flavors of blackberry, plums, acai, toast, espresso, dark chocolate, and dried herbs. The ripe tannins are exquisitely integrated offering tension, depth, and enormous promise for layers of beauty and complexity in the coming decades.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This offers the classic richness and breadth of the Shafer property, backed by a firm structure of fine-grained tannins and the cool, collected character of the Stags Leap district. It is saturated with dark cherries, dried blueberries, blackcurrants, graphite and bittersweet chocolate. At first sip expansive and ripe, then firmer and more linear on the palate due to the persistent tannins and overall fine balance. Drink now or hold.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Beautifully done, with a non-2022-like level of freshness and purity, the 2022 Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select reveals blackcurrant, spice, flowers, subtle chocolate, and graphite that all develop nicely with time in the glass. It's medium to full-bodied on the palate and has a pure, layered mouthfeel, ripe tannins, and a great finish. This incredibly successful 2022 can be drunk any time over the coming two decades. Drink 2025-2044.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Shafer's big kahuna, the 2022 Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select, was presented as a barrel sample in August 2025. Black cherries and cassis are framed by cedar and vanilla-inflected oak, giving this wine a slightly monolithic bouquet right now. It's full-bodied, dense and concentrated but still boasts the signature Stags Leap District texture to its suede-like tannins, which linger elegantly on the finish.
Barrel sample : 94-96
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Vinous
The 2022 Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select opens with a burst of dark-toned fruit wrapped up in beams of imposing tannin. Black plum, coffee, spice, leather and incense are all amplified. There's gorgeous depth and plenty of structure. The 2022 is still coming together in barrel, but it is one of the most promising wines of the year.
Range: 94-96 -
Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
2022 Shafer Hillside Select Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley – Stags Leap District shows a medium to deep ruby color and opens with ripe plum aromas that feel both generous and composed. Medium-bodied with impressive weight on the palate, it unfolds in layers, offering lively red and black fruit flavors framed by structure and finesse. The finish is firm and textured, carrying depth and persistence, reflecting the power and pedigree of this iconic hillside site. (Tasted: March 8, 2026, San Francisco, CA)
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Wine Spectator
A frankly ripe red, with a caressing, forward feel, this shows a bit more depth than most in the vintage, offering dark cherry and plum compote flavors laced with singed mesquite and melted black licorice in a style that delivers immediate appeal.
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.
A noble variety bestowed with both power and concentration, Cabernet Sauvignon enjoys success all over the globe, its best examples showing potential to age beautifully for decades. Cabernet Sauvignon flourishes in Bordeaux's Medoc where it is often blended with Merlot and smaller amounts of some combination of Cabernet Franc, Malbecand Petit Verdot. In the Napa Valley, ‘Cab’ is responsible for some of the world’s most prestigious, age-worthy and sought-after “cult” wines. Somm Secret—DNA profiling in 1997 revealed that Cabernet Sauvignon was born from a spontaneous crossing of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc in 17th century southwest France.
Legend has it that quick and nimble stags would escape the indigenous hunters of southern Napa Valley through the landmark palisades that sit just northeast of the current city of Napa. As a result, the area was given the name, Stags Leap. While its grape-growing history dates back to the mid-1800s, winemaking didn’t really take off until the mid-1970s after a small but pivotal blind tasting called the Judgement of Paris.
When a 1973 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon won first place against its high-profile Bordeaux contenders, like Chateau Mouton Rothschild and Chateau Haut-Brion, international attention to the Stags Leap District of Napa Valley escalated rapidly.
The vineyards in this one-of-a-kind wine growing region receive hot afternoon air reflecting off of its eastern palisade formation. In combination with the cool evening breezes from the San Pablo Bay just south, this becomes an optimal environment for grape growing. While many varieties could thrive here, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot dominate with virtually no others, save for a spot or two of Syrah.
Stags Leap soils—eroded volcanic and old river sediments—encourage well established root systems and result in complex, terroir-driven wines. Stags Leap District reds have a distinct sour cherry and black berry character with baking spice and dried earth aromas, and supple tannins.