Silverado Vineyards: Under the radar Napa Cabernets

As the number of Napa Valley labels continues to climb, new wineries grab buzz with $200-plus Cabernet cuvées or obscure varieties, while some wineries with 40-year histories have slipped under the radar, their wines sidelined by fascination with the latest.

That’s the current tale of Silverado, founded in Stag’s Leap District in 1978, whose first Cabernet was the 1981 vintage. Ever since, the winery has produced long-lived examples at reasonable prices – my main takeaway from a recent vertical tasting at the winery at the end of May was that they don’t get nearly as much attention as they should do.

Background

Diane Disney Miller, the only daughter of Walt Disney, fell in love with Napa Valley on a 1975 visit, and with her husband Ron and mother Lillian purchased vineyards in Yountville and Stags Leap. Soon after, they built this winery to make their own wines.

About six miles north of the city of Napa on the eastern side of the valley, Stags Leap was then (and still is) basking in the glory of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon triumph at the famous 1976 Judgement of Paris tasting.

Despite a long history for a Napa winery, the estate has had only two winemakers, which surely contributes to the wines’ consistent quality – as does owning over 160 hectares of prime vineyards. And in contrast to Napa’s tiny boutique wineries, Silverado produces some 25,000 cases of Cabernet annually – similar to that of a Bordeaux château.

Today, five of the 14 wines Silverado produces are Cabernets, three of them single-vineyard expressions. In its eponymously-named Silverado Vineyard in Stags Leap, the University of California at Davis has identified a unique Cabernet clone and given it ‘heritage’ status, one of only a handful recognised in this way.

Varying styles

When I turned off the Silverado Trail and drove up to the impressive stone and stucco Mediterranean-style winery, flowers were blooming and I had a panoramic view of the valley from the long terrace.

The tasting, though, took place in a brightly lit room in the winery itself, with maps of Silverado’s six vineyards on the walls and a lineup of magnums, stainless steel spittoons and polished glasses on a long white table. We were sampling eight vintages of the estate Cabernet Sauvignon, spanning four decades, and seven vintages of Solo, one of Silverado’s single-vineyard Cabernets, which debuted in 2002.

Long-time winemaker Jonathan Emmerich, associate winemaker Elena Franceschi, and managing director Russell Weis were all on hand to fill me in on the details.

As we sampled vintages of the estate blend, what struck me was the way the styles fell into distinct eras.

The 1987 is 100% Cabernet from Silverado Vineyard, and though still alive with a core of fruit, it’s a bit rustic.

Examples from the 1990s, aged in a combination of French and American oak, incorporated Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot, with half the grapes from Silverado Vineyard and half from the historic Mt. George Vineyard in cool Coombsville, purchased in 1988.

Both areas are noted for warm days and cool nights, which allow the grapes to retain acidity and develop flavour without getting too ripe.

The wines from the 2000s reflected Napa’s push toward riper, more powerful wines with higher alcohol and aged in more new oak, but were never over the top.

From 2000 to 2007, Silverado added purchased grapes to the estate blend to scale up production. ‘We lost our way for a few years,’ explains Emmerich, but they eventually rejected the idea and began tweaking viticulture and winemaking for higher quality – switching from cordon to cane trellising, using fewer and shorter pump overs, and adding optical sorting. Emmerich calls the subtle changes ‘death with a thousand cuts.’

With the last few vintages, the estate Cabernet seems even better than before. The wines are savoury, structured, juicy and elegant, yet cost less than $60.

But Silverado’s biggest change was adding single-vineyard bottlings to the range to showcase the individual terroirs of their major Cabernet vineyards, which began in 2002.

In contrast to the estate blend, Solo is 100% Cabernet from the heritage clone in Silverado Vineyard and is aged only in French oak.

It’s denser, deeper, and more intense and complex than the estate bottling, but still has a lush, red fruit prettiness. For me, the standouts are 2008 and 2016.

Diane Miller died in 2013, and Ron just this year, in February. But unlike many Napa wineries with succession problems, it’s not for sale. Four of the couple’s seven children are actively involved .

Silverado Cabernet through the years:

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