2017 Hillside Select Cabernet Sauvignon

This drips with rich blackberry, boysenberry and raspberry fruit flavors and is liberally laced with licorice root and singed alder notes, delivering a nice tarry tug through the finish as the fruit drips. Shows a twinge of the vintage's rusticity in its tannins, but it's a heck of an effort in this tricky year.

Hillside Select is 100% Cabernet Sauvignon produced each vintage from carefully selected blocks – including Sunspot, John’s Upper Seven, Venado Ilegal and Firebreak – of the hillside vineyards surrounding the winery, designed to express the voluptuous fruit, rich flavours and velvety texture that characterise Stags Leap District grapes. Aged 32 months in 100% new 60-gallon French oak barrels. Very heavy bottle. Deep crimson. Intense with notes of balsam that save it from being cloying. Dry finish with gloss and pace and, I’d like to think, the polish of Stags Leap. Much fresher than I remember from earlier vintages. Not plagued by too much ripeness.

The 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select is an insanely beautiful wine. The aromatics alone are pure seduction. Juicy, red berry fruit, crushed flower, cinnamon, blood orange and spice give the 2017 quite a bit of complexity, but it is the wine's textural finesse and impeccable balance that elevate it to its place among the very finest wines of the year. Stylistically, the 2017 is a bit more red-toned in profile. Texturally, it is a bit lighter and less opulent than the norm, but that is not a bad thing. The 2017 has always been stellar from barrel, but the from-bottle tasting is the proof in the pudding. It's a tour de force from Proprietor Doug Shafer and Winemaker Elias Fernandez.