Help! No Oak in the Tasting Room-Vanilla Blanket at Home?

We touched on this on the Silver Oak thread a few months back, but I just want some further insight (or advice) regarding a recent mediocre wine experience I had over the holidays:

I tried the St. Supery Dollarhide Ranch Cab (1999) at the winery this fall and loved it. Very savory, herbal, delicious cab similar to other Pope/Chiles Valley cabs I've tried. So....I splurged.

When I tried it this weekend, vanilla blanket! Still a bit savory underneath, but that darn vanilla blanket! I didn't think they even used American Oak (the website seems silent on this).

What happened? Did I just not let it breath long enough? I did splash decant it for a short time before hand. It was a 1999, so it had a few years on it. The producer wins rave reviews. What did I do wrong???? Bottle variation? Eek!

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A lot of very fruity wines will hide their oak load early on. As the fruit matures and starts to drop out a little, the oak comes to the forefront. This may be the case here.

Even on the trade tech sheets they only state "Once
fermentation completed, the wine was aged in barrels for 18 months."