Shafer Hillside Select Cabernet Sauvignon 2012

Professional Ratings

• 100 Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
  The 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select is not in bottle, but it looks like another three-digit wine in the making. It tips the scales at a lofty 15.3% natural alcohol, but tasters will never feel any “heat” tasting it. This is a beauty, with crème de cassis notes intermixed with spring flowers, a touch of toasty oak, blackberries, blueberries and cassis, as well as licorice, vanillin and a full-bodied mouthfeel. At this stage, it is more voluptuous and opulent than the 2010, simply because that’s the hallmark style of the 2012. No doubt this is a 30- to 50-year wine if you want to cellar it properly and nibble on it over a long period of time, but it will be much more approachable in its youth than most Hillside Selects tend to be. This is, once again, a fabulous effort.
  Barrel Sample: 98-100 Points
• 98 James Suckling
  This red has such glorious aromas of blueberry, boysenberry, flowers and cedar. Mint too. This is mouth-filling and rich yet balanced and fresh. The fruit covers the tannins now, but hold on. Turns to berries and spices. So complex and complete. A classic Hillside Select.
  Barrel Sample: 97-98 Points
• 98 Wine Enthusiast
  The highly sought-after, perennially beautiful and brawny Hillside Select is 100% estate grown and 100% varietal. It wows after three years in barrel, painting a lush picture of tobacco, tea and firm, integrated tannin dusted in smoky clove scents. Intensely peppery, its youthful blackberry and cherry flavors shine through but will benefit from even more time in bottle, through 2032. Cellar Selection
• 96 Wine Spectator
  Amazing from first sip to last, remarkably complex, layered and textured, smooth and supple, with a seductive creamy mocha oak presence to the long, expansive aftertaste, where the flavors cascade on top of one another and excite with anise and cedar. Drink now through 2032.
• 93 Decanter

  Fragrantly ripe blue-black fruit, incense and graphite introduce an open-knit, layered and broad wine which is comparatively accessible and easy-going for a Hillside Select of this age. Drinking Window 2017 - 2035