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96 points Decanter
The 2019 Silver Oak Napa Valley Cabernet shows a deep, ruby colour. It is a beautifully compact wine that delivers complex and nuanced aromas of Bing cherry and black raspberry with tobacco, currant leaf, and cedarwood laced with dried sage. Focused and linear on the medium to full-bodied palate, showing expressive dark berry character and exotic oak spices with a firm backbone of fine-grained structured tannins. Cool raspberry, cherry, and blackberry fruit are perfectly represented, and the lengthy finish is crisp, lively, and energetic. No doubt, this is one to cellar. Exhaustive oak seasoning experiments led by winemaker Nate Weis resulted in the discovery that the American oak they age Silver Oak in when seasoned for 24 months and toasted for 90 minutes, marks the point at which the oak imparts more vanillin character and delivers better tannin integration. By contrast, the 2018 vintage was aged in American oak, seasoned for 16 months and toasted for 60 minutes. Weis explains that their experiments showed that underseasoned American oak imparts a dill character, while overseasoning results in coconutty notes, but finding a sweet spot delivers that vanillian quality winemakers look for in French oak. Taste the 2018 and 2019s side by side if you can, and note the subtle differences and shift to a more savoury profile in the 2019 vintage, with a very precise integration of oak tannin. It will be exciting to follow their progression in the cellar and see how subsequent vintages shape up in healthy and challenging harvest years.

The 2005 is bottled and made in a rich yet elegant style, with loamy currant, spice and dried berry with a touch of cedary oak and a hint of graphite. It?????s very tight and young now, but well-balanced and fairly typical of the 2005 vintage for Napa Cabernet. - WS