“Shafer has long been the reference point for Stags Leap”
- Robert Parker, Wine Advocate, December 2009
If the last 4 years have taught us anything, then perhaps it's not to go with the flow; not to live by received wisdom. Tucked away on the east side of Napa Valley, in the Stags Leap District, a valley within a valley, the Shafers have spent a generation and a half dispelling received wisdom.
John Shafer's a modest man and would object to being labelled a visionary, but he it was who, in 1972, settled on a neglected hillside site which had already been rejected by several well-known Napa growers. His son Doug, having graduated from UC Davis in oenology and viticulture, started full-time in 1983 and, together with winemaker Elias Fernandez who joined the following year, set about upturning what he'd been taught. "The cookbook went out the window," says Doug. Hillside Select was born.
The 2007 is the 25th vintage of Hillside Select, and John, now in his 80s, Doug and Elias are probably the longest-standing winemaking team in California, but continue to push the envelope of quality with admirable determination and humility. After all, says Doug, "it's impossible to sit back on our laurels. Every year you get one shot, and just like Charlie Brown used to say, you get to be the hero or the goat. At every point in the process, there are about 100 things that can go haywire. While we have learned a great deal about how to make a bottle of wine, being the goat is only a few missteps away."* /AR
*Quoted in Robert Parker's The World's Greatest Wine Estates
Offered subject to confirmation for shipment spring 2012
