1995 Merlot

The Shafers are major vineyard owners, with 160 acres that include their own Stag Leap District ranch as well as holdings in Oak Knoll and Carneros. Fully 85% of their wine is from their own vines. The remarkably sweet, rich Hillside Select cabernet, which is aged in mostly new French oak for nearly 30 months and is typically bottled with alcohol in the 14% range, is from vines on the hillsides around the winery, which the Shafers hasten to point out is a relatively cool spot rated between Region 1 and Region 2 (a measure of accumulation of heat, in terms of degree days). "On the east side of the valley we get long hours of sunshine into the evening," Doug Shafer explains. The Shafers also harvest later than most of their neighbors, and in recent years have been able to make a wine that avoids the offputtingly herbaceous, leafy elements that plague so much Stags Leap cabernet. Au contraire Since overacidification and sterile filtration were discontinued here several years ago, the Hillside Select has been one of California's richest cabernets.