2008 Shafer Relentless

[TheEngineer]

I know that this wine is the WS wine of the year. I'm not chased after these wines for many years.....knowledge or snob? Not sure, but I do know this wine well, having tasted it many times both at the winery and at stores, restaurants, friends house, etc,..

In it of itself, I always thought of it as a good to very good wine. The 2008 when I tasted it alongside its stablemates, was in fact very good, to the point where I thought maybe I don't need HSS this year....

But the other night, when it was tasted beside the two SQN's, both very good wines in their own right, I was blown away. This wine was just as well constructed, just a dense and as complex, and in fact showed better at this point than the two SQN's. Very elegant yet very serious. On the nose, no doubting that this is a full bodied wine with tons of dark berry and dark fruits, moving on to the palate, same thing with the addition of tar, black cherry, black licorice on the palate. Powerful and serious all the way though, deep and dense and while inviting, there was something that seemed mysterious about this deep dark wine too. Well made, well done!!!!

[winoweenie]

The last vintage of Relentless I cellared was the 03. Also had the 01 & 02. The 3 has turned into a really banger-bottle. Has morphed from a big bruiser of a bottle into a suave slick drink that donned a tuxedo and is doing the waltz. Doubt it'll get much better so as soon as I'm thru with this stupid sabbatical I'll do a two-step with this sucker. WW

[TheEngineer]

I agree with you WW, and its not bad fro a value perspsective. At about $45 a bottle pre-WS king making, it hung in there with the big buys from SQN which are far more expensive.