2000 Silver Oak Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley

I tasted this wine at the Silver Oak winery in Napa. Lisa, Alexa and I had decided to drive up to Napa for lunch, so I took a detour down my favorite road in the world, Oakville Crossroad, home of arguably three of the finest California Cabernets, Opus One, Silver Oak, and Groth. Silver Oak has been a long time favorite of mine, especially the Napa Valley release. I fully intended to bag the limit of six bottles and hide them away in my wine locker to enjoy for years to come. This wine has an earth shattering nose, clean and intense. But that is were the wheels fall off. It is not bad, just disappointing. The wine has no structure or complexity; it is more like a cheap Merlot. In some ways I am not surprised, Justin Meyer the co-founder and chief winemaker since 1972 left about the time these grapes were picked. Brother Justin’s (He was a monk before entering the wine business) shoes will be hard to fill. A whopping 25,000 cases made. At a hundred dollars a bottle, pass it buy, you can do much, much better.