Shafer Hillside Select Cabernet Sauvignon (3 Liter Bottle - signed) 2006

Professional Ratings

• 95 James Suckling

  Bay leaf, dark fruits, and almonds on the nose. This wine is powerful, with a full body, and with flavors of mineral, mint, and lead pencil. I'm thinking Pauillac but tasting California. A very long finish, but needs some time. Be patient with this and wait until 2014.

• 95 Connoisseurs' Guide
  Among the deepest, most complete Cabernets that we have yet encountered from 2006, Shafer's latest tête de cuvee wins high praise for both concentration and keen focus. Its plentiful blackcurrant fruit dovetails perfectly with its equally generous oak, and it flavors build and build en route a long and wonderfully sustained finish. There is great scale and substance about this one, yet the wine manages to avoid being too much, and it will age famously for ten years or more on the strength of its exceptional balance.
• 94 Wine & Spirits
  Like the best vintages of Hillside Select, this wine has tremendous structural pwoer that remains almost imperceptible. On the surface, the tannins are pillowy soft, their supple richness surrounding a core of dark fruit. The wine is black, but not hyperextractedthe layers of dark chocolate flavor seem to come from the soil rather than from oak(it's not the sort of mocha or milk chocolate character that oak aging provides). Thsi is a cigar-smoker's cabernet, a powerful, resinous vintage from a vineyard with a track record for wines that age well over ten to 15 years.
• 92 Wine Enthusiast

  Young, tannic and juicy, filled with sweet blackberry, cherry and cassis flavors, and well oaked, having been aged in 100% new French barrels. Those are the raw facts. The wine itself shows the pedigree of this fine estate, and will no doubt pick up bottle nuances over the years. But it seems to lack the precision of the great 2001, 2003 and 2004 vintages. Try after 2012.

• 92 Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

  A slightly more compact version of the great Hillside, but nevertheless youthful, the 2006 Shafer Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select has a dense purple color, some notes of damp earth, cedar wood, forest floor, red and black currants, and toast. Some austere tannins kick in in the finish, but the wine is full-bodied, ripe and rich. An outstanding effort, but not one of the monumental vintages for Hillside Select, it should be drunk over the next 20 years. ?

• 91 Wine Spectator

  Firm, dense and chunky, with chewy, extracted tannins and dark berry, gravelly earth, mocha and anise notes, this seems unevolved. No sign of fading or gaining. Ends with gripping tannins.--2006 California Cabernet blind retrospective .