Silver Oak Cellars : Napa Valley "Cabernet Sauvignon" 2018

Gentle for an ’18, with mulled plum and black cherry fruit held together by dried violet and sweet bay threads. Offers an ever-so-slight touch of grain through the finish, which shows some maturity now. Drink now through 2030.

The lovely ruby red color is translucent, revealing a heady wine of blackberry, licorice, vanillin, spicebush, and dried floral notes with savory, 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 real depth to those fruit qualities framed by sculpted tannins that affix themselves to 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, which the Duncans have owned 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.

This structured and concentrated wine is spot on for the vintage. It’s very dense in color and aroma, saturated with ultra dark chocolate, graphite and blueberries on a firm texture of taut tannins that will need time to evolve. Aged in 85 to 90 percent new American oak barrels, the wine should be approachable by 2028 and best from 2033.