Winemaker Notes
This vintage of TD-9, with more than 50 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, fills the glass with vivid aromas and flavors of summer berries, black tea, rose petal, lavender, and black cherry. All this juicy radiance is knit together with ripe Napa Valley tannins, offering abundant enjoyment today while promising even more beauty with time in your cellar.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
An incredible value, the 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon TD-9 includes slightly more Merlot and is 47% Cabernet Sauvignon, 37% Merlot, 11% Malbec and the rest Petit Verdot. Round, sexy, full-bodied, and opulent, it has terrific aromatics of red and black currants, tobacco, chocolate, and lead pencil shavings. Drink this hedonistic yet balanced, elegant beauty over the coming 10-12 years. Best After 2022
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James Suckling
Aromas of blackberries with old spice, dark cherries and cloves, following through to a medium to full body with a sold core of ripe fruit and a creamy and stony underlying character. Juicy and rich, yet not overbearing. Cabernet sauvignon, merlot, malbec and petit verdot. Drinkable now, but better in 2025.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Red Blend TD-9 is a blend of 47% Cabernet Sauvignon, 37% Merlot, 11% Malbec and 5% Petit Verdot. Deep garnet-purple in color, alluring notes of mocha, tapenade and truffles jump from the glass, backed up by a core of cassis and stewed plums. Full-bodied, juicy and plush in the mouth, it has a lively line and a wonderfully pure, fruity finish.
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Wine Spectator
Polished and direct, with a beam of cassis and plum puree flavors flanked by singed vanilla. Features a flash of sweet tobacco on the finish. Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec and Petit Verdot.
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.