Silver Oak 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley
Silver Oak 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley
95 Point Iconic Silver Oak Napa Cab, latest release! Our ‘Cabernet’ Wine of the Year! (2023)
95 Point Iconic Silver Oak Napa Cab, latest release! Our ‘Cabernet’ Wine of the Year! (2023)
Silver Oak is the standard bearer for Napa Valley Cab and has been for decades. Every vintage shows the pedigree and outstanding quality that is Silver Oak's signature.
After blending in early 2019, the 2018 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon was transferred to American oak barrels from their cooperage, The Oak, where it aged for 24 months. Blending before barrel aging—a signature of their winemaking style—allows blends to be based on the inherent qualities of their vineyard components before oak influence. It was then aged for an additional 24 months in bottle before being released in February of 2023. Vintage to vintage, the resulting Cabernets emerge integrated and ready to drink upon release.
The final blend is 76% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15.2% Merlot, 5.1% Cabernet Franc,3.2% Petit Verdot and 0.5% Malbec and it shows ruby in color with notes of strawberry, fresh carnation, black pepper and vanilla. is wine builds in strength and body across the mid-palate with a blackberry character on the finish and bright cherry return. With integrated tannins, it’s expressive yet luxurious with an even, balanced finish.
95 Points Decanter
The lovely ruby red colour is translucent, revealing a heady wine of blackberry, liquorice, vanillin, spicebush, and dried floral notes with savoury, toasty oak spices. This 2018 offers one of the more restrained and pretty bouquets of Silver Oak's Napa Cabernet in my memory. Very elegant on the entry, revealing a medium-bodied red wine with lovely cranberry fruit, plums, and currants, with a real depth to those fruit qualities framed by sculpted tannins that affix themselves onto the palate before giving way and resolving. Cabernet Sauvignon-dominant with trace amounts of Petit Verdot and Malbec. Aged in 85% new American Oak from The Oak Cooperage in Higbee, Missouri, the Duncans have owned it outright since 2015. The other 15% are second-use American oak barrels. They've been using the same cooperage for decades. The barrels imbue the Silver Oak wines with a classic vanillin quality, a nuance they always want to retain, even as they experiment with various toasts to produce smoother tannins in the toasting process.