Good full medium ruby. Roasted, liqueur-like nose displays the warmth of the vintage. Massive, broad and very ripe but less delineated and taut than the 2003. Intensely flavored but doesn't yet come alive. The reticent flavors of blackcurrant and mint come across as rather disjointed today. Finishes with somewhat aggressive tannins. Slated for bottling in May, this was in an awkward stage at the time of my tasting.

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One of the world's, as well as Napa's, most profound Cabernet Sauvignons is the 2,000 or so case production of Shafer's Hillside Select. Made from their finest parcels in Stags Leap, the wine spends nearly 32 months in 100% new oak. This is a wine that usually has 20-30 years of aging potential. The 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select is showing even better than it did last year. A much sexier, opulent, flamboyant style of wine with notes of black currant liqueur intermixed with toasty new oak, charcoal, smoke, barbecue spices, and oodles of fruit, this wine has fabulous richness in an exuberant, sexy style, and a long, heady layered finish with nothing out of balance. The integration of acidity, tannin, wood, and alcohol are brilliant. This is a great wine to drink over the next two decades, if not longer.

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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.

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The Hillside Select is always one of my favorite wines. Amazingly well balanced for a wine with this level concentration. Love the finish that sails on and on.....