Winemaker Notes
Blend: 97% Syrah, 3% Petite Sirah
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A supersaturated, deep, almost thick wine that coats the mouth with potent dark fruit flavors and wraps them in a full body and firm, gripping tannins that need time to resolve. It's syrah with a 3% boost of petite sirah, bringing all the deep color, dark blue fruit and peppery spices of the Rhone. Grilled meat, charcoal and dried blackberries, too. Best from 2030.
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Vinous
The 2021 Relentless is a potent, brooding wine. Dark cherry, plum, licorice, cloves, game, scorched earth and black pepper explode onto the palate. Swaths of tannin wrap it all together. This intense, structured Syrah-based blend clearly needs a few years in bottle to be at its best. It's pretty impressive, even in the early going. The 2021 spent six more months in barrel than originally projected because of the delayed 2023 harvest.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Aged 30 months in new barrels, the 2021 Syrah Relentless is a beauty offering some wild, gamey nuances in its black and blue fruits, lavender, iron, and bacon fat-like nuances. These carry to a medium to full-bodied Syrah with a pure, layered, elegant style, fine tannins, and outstanding length.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Relentless is a blend of 97% Syrah and just 3% Petite Sirah, all aged 28 months in 100% new French oak. Like the rest of the Shafer red wines, it has effortlessly absorbed the oak treatment, delivering blackberries and blueberries on the nose. Full-bodied, sturdy and tannic, it finishes long and dusty. Give it another couple of years to smooth out and then drink it over the next 15 years.
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Wine Spectator
Richly textured yet intensely structured, this red offers gutsy blackberry, mocha espresso, olive and toasty spice flavors that build tension toward broad-shouldered tannins. Syrah and Petite Sirah. Best from 2026 through 2032.
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Wine Enthusiast
This full-bodied syrah captures robust structure and brooding tones from a splash of Petite Sirah. Integrated oak spices and layers of flavor wash the palate with persistent tannins and a very long finish.
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.