Producer Profile: Silver Oak

Inside Silver Oak’s sleek new LEED-Platinum certified winery in Sonoma, floor-to-ceiling windows frame long views of green vineyards and rolling mountains.

Looking out, I breathe in the filtered air and reflect on the virtues of sustainable building – the salvaged redwood siding from old wine tanks, the roof’s solar panels, the recycled water, the huge basalt rock in the circular wine library.

Scroll down to see Elin McCoy’s top Silver Oak tasting notes and scores

This eco-conscious, modern barn-like Alexander Valley winery, which opened in 2018, is a step into the future for Silver Oak, a nearly 50-year-old California wine name dedicated to Cabernet Sauvignon, but with a surprising twist.

For decades Silver Oak has been doing something unusual in northern California: making two parallel high-end Cabernets, one from Sonoma, one from Napa, under the same brand name.

The bottle shapes differ slightly, but both labels feature an oak tree and the winery’s signature wooden water tower.

And the dual Cabernet identity was woven into Silver Oak from its beginning in the early 1970s, by founders Justin Meyer and Raymond Duncan.

The two wineries are about an hour’s drive from one another, but how much do the wines differ?

Keen to understand the backstory, compare the two cuvees, and discover where the future lies for this historic brand beloved by LeBron, Oprah, and pro sports teams like the Golden State Warriors, I headed north from Healdsburg to taste a decade’s worth of Cabernet.

Fact box

Founded by: Raymond Twomey Duncan and Justin Meyer

Date founded: 1972

Location: Napa Valley and Alexander Valley in Sonoma

Owners: the Duncan family; David Duncan CEO and President

Production: about 100,000 cases of Cabernet

Vineyards: 400 acres in Napa Valley and Alexander Valley

Wines: Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon

Other wineries: Twomey, Ovid

Though the wines are among California’s most popular premium reds, they haven’t always wowed the critics.

Some refer to them as ‘Dad’ Cabernets that appeal to boomers. Yet they’re among the most requested wines at restaurants – especially steakhouses — and have passionate fans who turn up at annual winery release parties in vehicles that range from Harley Davidsons to stretch limos.

A look back

As current CEO David Duncan, son of the founder, showed off all the winery’s green features, he also talked history.

The story begins in the Napa Valley, a hotbed of winery startups in the 1970s as would-be vintners bought up vineyard land and began resurrecting historic estates abandoned during Prohibition.

One of the few to survive that era was Christian Brothers where Justin Meyer was a winemaking brother.

He left the order in 1972 and joined forces with Colorado oil entrepreneur Duncan, the finance guy. He’d invested in an Alexander Valley vineyard in 1970 and planned to buy a Napa property and create an equal partnership with Meyer if he’d sign on as winemaker.

Today the idea of focusing solely on Cabernet seems a no-brainer, but back then it was a radical idea even in Napa, where vintners produced everything from Riesling to Zinfandel.

When released, the duo’s first vintage, from mostly Alexander Valley grapes, sold for $6 a bottle – the first review called it ‘overpriced.’ Duncan, whose father died in in 2015, says only 17 bottles are left. The winery’s favorite saying is ‘Life is a Cabernet.’

At the same time they began planting a vineyard at the Napa property, producing a Napa Cab in 1979, and a single vineyard version they later discontinued.

Acclaim came quickly, with critics divided over which Cabernet was best, and success funded a new winery in Napa in 1982. For the 1997 vintage release, 100 people slept at the winery the night before to make sure to grab a bottle.

And so things continued until 2001, when Justin Meyer sold his share to Duncan, whose son David took over in 2002, with a plan to vastly expand production.

Some critics – notably Robert Parker – who were fans of the wines in the 1980s and 1990s, claimed the quality of the wines suffered.

Duncan faced serious 21st century challenges: a massive fire at the Napa Valley winery that destroyed nearly $4 million-worth of wine, climate change, and scaling up while still keeping fans.

His response has been to buy more vineyard land, invest in grape research and technology, buy a cooperage, court professional sports teams, and above all, build a couple of the greenest wineries in California.

The Silver Oak style & its evolution

In its long-for-California history, Silver Oak has had only three winemakers. Meyer set the basic style: rich, ripe, packed with intense fleshy up-front fruit and a smooth texture. The hallmark was aging the wines in American oak, which added notes of vanilla, sweet spices, dill.

‘We always wanted to make a completely American wine,’ Duncan explains. ‘Bordeaux style wasn’t our goal.’

The smoothness, he says, comes from blending before the wines are put in barrel. An extra year in the bottle before release ensures they’ll be ready to drink.

Timeline

1972 Founded by Raymond Duncan and Justin Meyer; first Cabernet produced.

1979 First Napa Cabernet produced.

1982 The Napa Valley winery opens.

1994: Justin Meyer hires winemaker Daniel Baron.

2001 Justin Meyer sells his share to the Duncan family.

2002 Justin Meyer dies; David Duncan takes over the estate; the Duncan family launches Twomey.

2006 Fire destroys 117 barrels of wine and parts of the Napa winery.

2012 Silver Oak buys Sausal Winery in Sonoma, which becomes Silver Oak Alexander Valley

2014 Nate Weis becomes the company’s third winemaker. Baron and Weis work in tandem until Baron retired in 2017

2015 Raymond Duncan dies; Silver Oak takes ownership of the Missouri cooperage

2016 Napa winery becomes the world’s first LEED Platinum production winery

2017 Silver Oak purchases Napa Valley winery Ovid; signs partnership with San Francisco Giants

2018 Silver Oak Alexander Valley winery opens; receives LEED Platinum certification.

I tasted 21 recent wines, starting with 2005 — 11 Alexander Valley, 10 Napa – and two from 1986 in a quiet tasting room adjacent to Silver Oak’s huge hospitality center, with spectacular views of distant hills.

A month later the destructive Kincade fire left those hillsides charred but didn’t damage the winery or vineyards.

There are more differences in winemaking between the two cuvees than you might expect.

The Alexander Valley is aged in one-half new barrels and one-half used, and has a higher percentage of Cabernet Sauvignon. For the Napa Valley the barrel regime is 100% new oak (though recent vintages have cut back slightly), and is about 80% Cabernet with a good dollop of Merlot, plus some Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.

The other difference is terroir. The grapes for each come from a variety of sources, not just estate vineyards. I’ve often preferred the Alexander Valley, partly because of less new oak, but also because of Alexander Valley’s typical dried herb and tobacco character and lifted structure compared to Napa’s power, concentration, and riper fruit.

But the styles haven’t been static. Duncan points out, ‘our vineyard sources have changed, our barrels have changed, our technology has changed, and now we have better grapes and more control.’ I think that shows in the quality of the last several vintages.

As of 2015, Silver Oak fully owns the cooperage in Missouri it’s been working with for more than a decade. As Duncan says, ‘there’s a terroir to wood, too.’ He’s locked in a better grape supply by acquiring some 250 acres of vineyards, selling off those on the valley floor. Now 75% of their wine comes from their own grapes – it used to be 25%.

The Alexander Valley winery is built on the 113 acres he bought in 2012.

Winemaker Daniel Baron, who took over in 2001, instituted precision farming using aerial infrared photography and a berry sensory analysis protocol to pinpoint the perfect harvest date; it includes chewing grapes 15 times and rating those from each block 1 to 6 in categories like seed ripeness.

Current winemaker, Nate Weis arrived in 2014, and took over in 2016, so we’ll have to wait and see how what he changes.

My biggest take away from the tasting is that both cuvées are consistently solid, well made, polished, balanced in alcohol, and sometimes flashy but not exciting.

The last few vintages seem to be less oaky and more lifted, promising a strong future direction, especially considering Silver Oak now makes more than 100,000 cases a year.

The future and going green

Duncan is justifiably proud that Silver Oak is at the forefront of sustainability in California wine circles, with an impressive list of eco-friendly accomplishments, starting with certified LEED Platinum status for both wineries, a model for others to follow.

In Alexander Valley, building materials were vetted for harmful chemicals, solar panels generate more than 100% of energy use, and a membrane bioreactor treats and filters 100% of their water.

But he also wants the wines to be accessible, available, and profitable, which is why he has invested in land.

‘I think a lot about permanence,’ Duncan says, ‘If you look at the great wine families, what they have in common is owning the land. That’s their anchor.’

See Elin McCoy’s top Silver Oak tasting notes and scores

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