The cult of Cabernet: Silver Oak Cellars soars with single-minded niche.

• Author: Smith, Alta
• Position: Silver Oak Wine Cellars - Company overview

California cult wineries are by definition small and their wines exclusive, expensive and predominantly Cabernet Sauvignon. About a dozen wineries have reached cult status. One of the first, if not the first, cult wineries in the United State was Silver Oak Cellars, a winery with Colorado roots that started in a dairy barn with an exclusive focus on one grape.

Followers of Silver Oak--and their numbers have grown considerably over the years--may know the winery's background. But they may not know that Silver Oak Cellars and its wines might not have been created and grown into the business it is today without the acumen of a Colorado family.

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Silver Oak Cellars was created out of a partnership, sealed with a handshake, between Colorado oilman and entrepreneur Raymond Duncan and a California winemaker who originally wanted to become a monk, Justin Meyer. It got its name because it was located between Oakville and the Silverado Trail in Napa County.

The Duncan family continues to run the privately held venture, with Ray Duncan, 76, actively involved. Two of his four sons are officers--David is president and Tim is executive vice president. The other sons, Mike and Kevin, live in Denver.

Mike manages the family-owned Diamond Tail Ranch, which raises buffalo and cattle on the Laramie River in the northern part of the state. Kevin is vice president of Duncan Oil. Ray's wife, Sally, has been involved in market-ing the wines as well as the tasting rooms at the winery's locations in the Napa and Alexander valleys. Tim's fiance, Roo McKenna, is a childhood friend from the fourth grade at Cherry Hills Elementary.

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Silver Oak's story occupies an important niche in California's wine industry, partly because it so single-mindedly bet on Cabernet Sauvignon while other wineries were bottling several varieties of both red and white wines. It also proved that close attention to business, especially to its main customers and its marketing, could pay off for a winery that was going against the grain.

Silver Oak's success encouraged many other California wineries to make Cabernet Sauvignon one of the state's leading varietals. And Meyer, who died in 2002, helped shape the California wine industry with his advocacy of wine education and service in many wine organizations.

Not bad for a cult winery, although most people would not consider Silver Oak a cult winery anymore because of its size. Cult wineries have small productions, perhaps a few hundred to 2,000 cases annually, with limited distribution and high prices. Silver Oak's first vintage, 1972, put it...