Need a little help picking out the perfect wine list for your holiday party? Our friends at Coastal Living have done the work for you and selected “8 Bottles of Wine That Will Impress Everyone at Your Holiday Party.” Below is what they had to say about “The Best Cabernet Sauvignon”.
The Best Cabernet Sauvignon
Our Pick: Dry Creek Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
Cab may never have had the fall from grace that Aussie shiraz did in the early aughts, but many of its adherents are still galvanized by the same tenets—namely, brute force. Why, they reason, would you merely slice open a watermelon when you could use a Gallagher-sized sledgehammer. Some may call it the Robert Parker effect, I just call it a chronic misfire. Because at its best, cabernet sauvignon possesses some semblance of elegance.
Enter Dry Creek Vineyard, a second-generation winery that has never betrayed its Bordeaux-centric roots. Aged in French oak (only 37% new oak), and blended with trace amounts of merlot, malbec, cabernet franc, and petit verdot, their Dry Creek Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($25) exemplifies that perfect dichotomy of power and grace. Yes, there’s plenty of structure, but it’s built upon a foundation of silky tannins, fat-cutting acidity, and dark fruit untethered by a shroud of vanilla (a one-dimensional side effect of new American oak).