Shafer Relentless, Napa Valley, 2016

Grade: A

If you’ve read the “about us” section, you know that we recently took our certified sommelier exam. Our rockstar tutor recently took his level 3 WSET exam as well. So it was only appropriate that we got together to celebrate and kick our heels up a bit, and naturally, we wanted to share some celebratory wines! We may have also shook up and then fired off some sparkling wine (because WHY NOT), but I digress.

One of the wines we had for our post-exam shindig was this absolutely delicious Shafer Relentless. Shafer makes some great Napa Cabernets as well, but this particular wine is 90% Syrah and 10% Petit Verdot. This is a big, powerful wine with both some red cherry and strawberry notes to it, as well as some black cherry and plum notes, and just a bit of earthiness and even slight meatiness that you can often get with a Syrah (Wine that smells meaty? Is that gross? NO it’s not, trust us) It also has a little oak aging to it, so it smells a little like dill (the herb), and you’re basically going to smell this and think MMMMMM, and then taste it and think the same.

This was Katie’s favorite wine of the night. It was such a delight. We’ll post Bart’s favorite next.

Food pairing idea: Pappardelle and Ragu

In a nutshell:

Grade: A

Price: $90 at Total Wine

Would we buy it again: for a special occasion, yes