OADE Single Barrel Cabernet Sauvignon - Oakville
$125.00
Description:
The Vineyard: Our Oakville Cabernet Sauvignon comes from a small block on the prestigious eastern bench of Napa Valley's Oakville AVA. This bench is celebrated for its elegant balance, vibrant fruit purity, and refined structure—often striking a harmonious middle ground between the power of mountain sites and the riper opulence of warmer valley-floor areas. The wine is shaped by well-drained alluvial and gravelly benchland soils (with some volcanic influences on the east side), moderate daytime warmth, and cooling fog/marine breezes.
The Vintage: 2022 in Oakville was generally hotter than normal. Including a week plus stretch of over 100 degrees. Grapes were picked earlier and all at once in a chaotic yet quality vintage of, riper and robust style wines. This resulted in richer, riper, opulent, dense, and concentrated reds with luxurious tannins, deep color, juicy exuberance, plush fruit, and approachable early appeal.
The Barrel: Aged in Darnajou barrels. These barrels are renowned for using premium French oak (primarily from central France's oldest forests like Allier, Nevers, or similar tight-grain sources), selected with exhaustive specifications for exceptional fineness, density of grain, sweetness, and aromatic/chromatic complexity. This results in barrels that subtly enhance a wine's intrinsic aromas without overpowering it, delivering elegant integration of delicate vanilla, spice, toast, cocoa, candied fruit, and savory notes.
Tasting Notes:
Nose: Deep black fruit—black currant, blackberry, black cherry, cassis, and plum—with hints of redder notes like cherry or raspberry. Savory layers of cedar, dried thyme, sage, graphite, crushed rock minerality, and tobacco.
Palate: Medium- to full-bodied density, velvety tannins (grippy but polished), bright acidity for freshness and lift, and excellent integration of oak that comes out with dominant notes of milk chocolate and malt balls.
Finish: Long, elegant finish with lingering fruit, minerality, and herbal nuance, great finesse and complexity that makes this wine beautiful to drink now but very age worthy.