2003 Shafer Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley
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Tasting notes
With respect to the Cabernet Sauvignon program, the 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon Napa includes tiny dollops of Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Petit Verdot. Showing better than it did last year immediately after bottling, it possesses a deep ruby/purple color, terrific fruit, a big, sweet nose of loamy soil, subtle oak, black currants, flowers, and cedar, great finesse and richness, a medium to full-bodied texture, soft tannin, and decent acidity. Drink it over the next 10-15 years. Tel. (707) 944-2877; Fax (707) 944-9454
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Robert Parker
Robert Parker
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Bright ruby-red. Cool aromas of redcurrant, cherry cola, tobacco leaf, sassafras and oak. Sweet and creamy in the mouth, with sound acidity and moderate depth of red fruit flavors. Not the richest recent vintage for this bottling, but suave and sweet on the back.
The chunky, rustic 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon possesses aggressive tannin in its big, corpulent personality. It should drink well for a decade. Shafer Vineyards, one of the most impeccably run wineries in the world, is a wonderful family operation that deserves all the success they have earned. (Release date 3/06) Tel. (707) 944-2877; Fax (707) 944-9454
About the producer
The site of Shafer has been around since 1880, and grapes continued to be grown here, even during prohibition. It is said that some wine was made here during that time. In 1972, John Shafer bought the property in the Stag’s Leap district, he immediately began planting the Cabernet on the hillside.