Shafer Vineyards :: 2008 One Point Five™ Cabernet Sauvignon Stags Leap District

2008 One Point Five® Cabernet Sauvignon Stags Leap District

Release date: March 1, 2011
Suggested California retail: $70

"[Shafer produces] Cabernet that defines the Stags Leap District."
– Wine & Spirits magazine

Shafer Vineyards is pleased to announce the release of 2008 One Point Five Stags Leap District Cabernet Sauvignon, a wine that celebrates the winery's roots in this special area of Napa Valley.

"A Stags Leap District Cabernet was our first wine back in 1978," says Doug Shafer, president, Shafer Vineyards. "This is our home. This is the place we know best and the fruit we've been cultivating for more than 30 years."

The Shafer family purchased their Napa Valley hillside estate in 1972, a property that had been the site of wine grape cultivation since the 1880s. John Shafer planted Cabernet Sauvignon on the property in the early and mid-1970s and from those vines made his first wine in 1978.

Shafer released that first vintage (100 percent Cabernet Sauvignon) in 1981 and Doug Shafer joined his father at the winery, as winemaker, just two years later.

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"Dad and I learned the wine business together,' says Doug. "At some point we coined the phrase 'a generation-and-a-half' to describe our partnership because it wasn't the classic second-generation story where a parent hands off an established, profitable family business to a son or daughter. We were both here in the fingers-crossed days when no one was sure the winery would be a success."

The One Point Five label takes its name from the generation-and-a-half idea.
One Point Five is sourced primarily from two Stags Leap District vineyards – Shafer's hillside estate and the Borderline vineyard located two miles south of the winery, a 25-acre site purchased by the winery in 1999.

Winemaker’s Notes
"This is a Cabernet that is so enjoyable now and will just get better with time in the cellar. Aromas of rich, polished black fruit, mocha, and spice, followed by fulsome, juicy flavors of blackberry and black cherry, chocolate, plum and cedar, with ripe, smooth tannins and a pleasingly long finish," says Shafer Winemaker Elias Fernandez.

2008 One Point Five Cabernet Sauvignon Stags Leap District is released with a suggested California retail price of $70.

"… slightly more powerful [than 2007] with sweeter fruit as well as more glycerin and fat, this is a big, full-bodied Stags Leap Cabernet offering abundant notes of roasted herbs, chocolate, cassis, incense and earth Drink this deep, powerful 2008 over the next 10 - 15 years."
— Robert M. Parker, Jr., The Wine Advocate