2020 Silver Oak Cabernet Sauvignon Alexander Valley 750 ml

For 52 years now, quality has been the essence of Silver Oak.

The winery has few peers when it comes to their obsession with delivering top-tier wine. That’s why, even among the many iconic and influential California Cabernets we offer, Silver Oak’s Alexander Valley Cabernet stands out: It’s one of the top-rated bottles on Wine Access, boasting the kind of member-ratings that we see for wines four times the price.

When we spoke with Silver Oak’s Matt Duncan and got on the topic of consistency, he invoked the wines that have inspired his family. “You don’t think about the vintage with the great estates of France,” he said, “and that’s the reputation we’ve aimed for.”  

Their commitment shows in their Alexander Valley winemaking facility, which turned out its first vintage in 2017. The virtues and features of the new facility—which earned not just LEED Platinum Certification but is the first winery and largest structure to earn the Living Building Challenge certification—are too numerous to name, so we’ll detail one: their far-sighted water recycling system, which collects water used in the winery, purifies it via a membrane reactor, then pumps it back in so the team can use it again.  

It’s far more than an environmental feather in Silver Oak’s cap or a way to lower their water bill in always-too-dry California: It freed up two acres that would have been needed for a drain field—two acres of prime Alexander Valley land that are now planted to Cabernet Sauvignon.