1990 Shafer Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select

(13.5% alcohol; Doug Shafer refers to this wine as "the first vintage of the modern era"): Dark red with an amber rim. Very ripe aromas of plum, mocha, coffee and spices, complicated by a saline element that carries through onto the palate. Distinctly finer-grained than the earlier vintages, offering a pliant texture to its musky flavors of plum and roast coffee. Tannins are fully resolved. Drink up. Beginning with this vintage, the Hillside Select has been aged in 100% new French oak. Incidentally, Shafer noted that despite the cool summer in 1990, the team got the small crop riper than any vintage of the 1980s.