Venge Silencieux for hearty festive Christmas Eve dinner - Silent One for Silent Night, Holy Night
Just returned from a family Christmas gathering in Conneticut, Alec, Vivianna and the girls joined us for a festive Christmas Eve dinner.
Linda prepared a delicious hearty beef roast with potatoes, carrots, green beans and onions, with a garden salad and fresh brioche rolls.
As is customary, when dining with Alec and Viv, I pulled from the cellar one of our ‘V’ collection of wines, having fun paying tribute to daughter-in-law Vivianna.
Readers of these pages know about this tradition and how we can fulfill it with bottles from Venge Vineyards, or Viader, or some occasional others - Verite’, Vine Cliff, Varner ….
This premium selection featured a large, oversized, heavy painted bottle, predominantly bearing the ‘V’ Venge Vineyards logo.
We feature Venge Vineyards often in these pages going back many years, and highlighting many family gatherings -
Visit to Venge Vineyards and Nils Venge
Gala Family Celebration Dinner at Angelis Italian
https://unwindwine.blogspot.com/2017/12/venge-napa-valley-oakville-penny-lane.html
Venge "Silencieux" Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2011
We hold dozens of Venge labels dating back decades, and chose this large, heavy, oversized painted bottle for the occasion - and, selected the oldest of half a dozen vintages of this label, as part of cellar management.
Silencieux 2011 was a big bold expressive Napa Cab, and proved an ideal pairing with the hearty beef meal.
Venge describes this wine and the inspiration for the Silencieux (Silent One) name on the rear label, shown below - fitting for this Silent Night, Holy Night!
This is 100% Cabernet that was blended by winemaker/producer Kirk Venge from five different vineyard sources in Oakville, Calistoga, Mount Veeder, Spring Mountain and Coombsville. Hence, a Napa Valley designation, but no further sub-classification single AVA granularity. (There are seventeen appellations (AVA’s) in Napa Valley.
Reviewing my experience with this wine, and reading the pundit’s expressions, this is perhaps an object lesson in interpreting reviewers comments of a wine. Or perhaps I obsess, but that’s what makes these assessments fun!
Being a blend of no less than five different vineyards, perhaps its my imagination, but this seemed to be slightly obtuse, a cacophony of flavors, big, bold and forward, almost slightly aggressive in its boldness - but delicious nonetheless.
I felt that at fourteen years in 2024, that it might need another couple years to integrate and settle, but alas, perhaps not. Time will tell but I suspect it’s at the peak of its tasting window and will not improve, or be tamed, with further aging.
Wine Enthusiast, who rated it 93 points and anointed it a “Cellar Selection”, projected it to “age effortlessly through at least 2021.”
Wine Enthusiast noted further, “It makes you wonder why we obsess with single-vineyard bottlings.” And, more to that pint, it is available at a big discount to those single vineyard labels providing nice QPR - Quality Price Ratio.
It was also rated 92 and 91 points by Wine Advocate and International Wine Cellar, respectively.
Wine Advocate said, “The 2011 Cabernet Sauvignon Silencieux is a much larger cuvee, …. Rich, concentrated, round and generous, this is a sumptuous Cabernet Sauvignon with no hard edges” Large and generous stand out in my purview, indeed, and I might disagree about the ‘hard edges’.
International Wine Cellar referred to it as “Slightly high-toned … very good vinosity and serious length. Excellent for the vintage.“ Which ends on the point that 2011 was a slightly ‘off’ vintage in Napa Valley, and perhaps it’s simply that lack of perfection in the vintage that shows in this slightly less than stellar showing.
Delicious, none-the-less, my words, which I later discover echo Wine Advocate sentiments - … “but it is a delicious, reasonably priced Napa Cabernet Sauvignon that showcases Venge’s Midas touch with this varietal.”
Dark, bright ruby-red, medium-full bodied, rich, concentrated, round, forward ripe black currant and blackberry fruits, highlighted by dark mocha, graphite, currant, clove spice, anise and sweet oak, with full round tannins and tangy acidity on the sumptuous finish.
RM 92 points.
We also opened a
Groth Birthyear Vintage Napa Cab which we featured in this follow on blogpost. Notably, winemaker for this wine was Nils Venge!
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