Hillside Select puts Shafer’s best hillside Cabernet Sauvignon front and center. Drawn from a tight selection of Stags Leap District blocks, the 2022 is 100% Cabernet Sauvignon, shaped by the small, intensely flavored berries these slopes produce. James Suckling gave it 97 points, a fitting mark for a wine built from such a selective piece of Shafer’s estate. Hillside Select is built slowly. The 2022 spends 28 months in 100% new French oak barrels from Allier and Tronçais, giving this powerful Cabernet the time to open aromatically and soften structurally. It is a long, deliberate élevage designed to turn hillside intensity into polish.  I’ve always viewed Hillside Select as one of Napa Valley’s great measuring sticks. It belongs in the same conversation as many of the valley’s most coveted cult Cabernets, yet its reputation has always been earned in the glass. At under $300, the 2022 is a rare chance to buy at the top end of Napa without paying the increasingly common cult-wine tariff.