2017 Shafer Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select Stags Leap District Napa Valley 750 ml

In 1972, a Windy City publishing exec named John Shafer ditched his career and moved his family out to Napa Valley, settling in what’s now the Stags Leap District. The property they purchased had unruly vines that had been planted back in 1922, and for Shafer—in his mid-40s at the time—tearing up and replanting those 30 acres represented about a lifetime’s worth of work.

But he still took on more. 

He was taken by the steep hillsides that comprise the warm amphitheater of the Stags Leap District—slopes that no one had dared attempt to plant. But he saw huge potential in the sun exposure and the nutrient-poor soils, so he started clearing room for vines, even blasting apart truck-sized boulders with dynamite. Popular opinion of the project was captured in the name of the original plot: It became known as John’s Folly.

In 1978, he made a wine from the first newly planted block of hillside vines. When he released it to high praise in 1981, the world had its first taste of what would become one of Napa Valley’s greatest wines: Shafer Hillside Select. 

Grown on vineyard blocks including Sunspot, John’s Upper 7, Venado Ilegal, and Firebreak, the blueberry-sized grapes that went into the 2017 were picked into small bins and sorted meticulously before the stems were removed with a cage sized specifically for the tiny hillside berries. Once they were vinified, the wine went into tight-grained French oak barrels selected by winemaker Elias Fernandez.

The result is a wine that stands alone at the pinnacle of the vintage. Wine Advocate rated it 98+ points, which topped every other Cabernet made that year. Don't miss it.