words: EMILY BELL
design: DANIELLE GRINBERG
A life well lived has its milestone moments. A winery well run has its milestones, too.
Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars is celebrating two major milestone moments. Not only did the famed winery just celebrate its 50th anniversary, it’s also celebrating the 45th anniversary of its landmark victory in the famous 1976 Judgment of Paris. Which is to say, forty-five years ago (May 24th, to the day) the seemingly humble young winery from the Napa Valley ousted a roster of classic Bordeaux wines in a blind tasting—by French wine experts, no less. It was a milestone moment for the winery, and a milestone moment in the entire history of wine. The world began paying attention to Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, Napa Valley, and the New World, and hasn’t stopped since.
That was forty-five years ago. Suffice to say 2021 is a special year for Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. No surprise: they want it to be a special year for you, too, a year to turn your attention to your own milestone moments, put the joys and accomplishments of your years front and center—and toast them with just the right glass of gorgeous wine. In fact, in honor of its dual anniversaries, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars has opened up some of its prestigious Legacy Collection – rare wines from the library – so you can mark your milestone moments in style.
And there really will be a perfect wine for every milestone. Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars might have beat out Bordeaux in 1976, but the winery wasn’t founded to stamp out the Old World with the rugged boot print of Californian enology. Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars has built a legacy on creating beautiful age-worthy wines, a fusion of old and new, thoroughly rooted in terroir, driven by bold vision. And now, courtesy of winemaker Marcus Notaro, they have a vast, beautiful collection of elegant wines, a legacy maintained and enriched over fifty years. No doubt, there’s a wine in their library to mark your every milestone moment, big and small.
There are countless happy and important moments in the life of a winery—from bud break to releasing a new vintage to uncorking a beautiful bottle. We can’t count them all. But here are the milestones in fifty years of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. We hope you’ll celebrate with us.
The founder of what will become Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars samples Cabernet Sauvignon from a pioneering winemaker named Nathan Fay, whose vineyards sit beneath the Stags Leap Palisades in the Napa Valley. Nobody knows it yet, but it’s a tasting that will change wine history.
Awestruck by what he tasted in wine from Fay’s vineyard, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars founder purchases the land adjoining it. He promptly removes the property’s plum trees, plants Cabernet Sauvignon and a lesser amount of Merlot grapes, and calls the vineyard “S.L.V.,” for Stag’s Leap Vineyard. History takes root, and Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars is born.
Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars releases its first vintage wine, the 1972 Stag Leap Wine Cellars S. L.V. Cabernet Sauvignon. The release marks the beginning of an expression that will influence palates in the entire region.
After tasting through the 1974 vintage, consulting winemaker Andre Tchelistcheff is amazed by the quality of wine from one specific barrel numbered 23. This lot was so beautiful and deliciously distinct that it is bottled as CASK 23 for the first time.
Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars shocks the wine world—and puts the Napa Valley on the winemaking map—when its entry defeats all of its French competitors in a historic wine tasting competition called “The Judgment of Paris.” Arranged by British wine shop owner Steven Spurrier, the Paris-based tasting was supposed to be an easy victory for Bordeaux. Instead, in a fully blind tasting, the “humble” 1973 S.L.V. quietly throttled the competition, ending the long dominance of Old World wine.
Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars purchases Nathan Fay’s original vineyard in 1986. Four years later, they release the first bottling of FAY Cabernet Sauvignon and FAY joins S.L.V. and CASK 23 in the elite Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Estate Collection. With their power, nuance, and seductive intensity, the three Estate Cabernets embody Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars’ version of “an iron fist in a velvet glove.”
The winery creates its ARTEMIS Cabernet Sauvignon, named for the Greek goddess of the hunt. The first vintage is 2001 and has with its tender heart of dark fruits like cassis and black cherry, savory notes of pepper, olive and even truffle, and graceful notes of florals and vanilla. The release of such a dynamic wine marks the start of a long love affair between ARTEMIS and restaurant wine lists and adds ARTEMIS to Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars’ long list of accomplishments.
Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars celebrates its 50th Anniversary. And while celebrations in 2020 are necessarily subdued, the sense of achievement is strong: in half a century of its existence, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars has changed the balance of power, influence, and style in the wine world; it’s also proven an invaluable training ground for some of the New World’s most important winemakers. With winemaker Marcus Notaro at the helm since 2013, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars has arrived at its fiftieth year with an enduring respect for terroir, true farming, and the muscled finesse of great California wines.
In May, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars celebrated the 45th anniversary of its incredible victory at the Judgment of Paris, when its 1973 S.L.V. Cabernet Sauvignon overturned all assumptions about Old and New World wines and changed the course of winemaking history. Since then, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars’ impact has continued to grow, influencing the next generation while preserving the deeply-rooted culture, the terroir-driven winemaking at the heart of its mission, on a very (very) special patch of earth.
Now, more than ever, we need to celebrate our milestone moments. Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars wines drink beautifully now and age incredibly well, making them ideal wines to mark milestones big and small.
Whatever you’ve subjected your palate to in the prior 20 years, turning 21 is a milestone, and a fresh start. It’s also an opportunity to start a legacy of drinking great wine. A bottle like 2018 ARTEMIS Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon is the perfect thing—a classic Cabernet that’s affordable, but still complex and dashing, expressive and delicious. The wine is pleasant and round with flavors of dark chocolate, plum, dried fruit and toasted oak. The finish is rich and lingering. Edgy, like a 21 year-old. Happy Birthday, indeed.
Birthday candles have little flames, but the right bottle of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars wine lights that flame within, the one that’s kept you going all these years. So when the next milestone decade hits, reach for a bottle like the 1999 FAY Cabernet Sauvignon. Just like you at 40 (or 50, or 60), the 1999 FAY has tremendous character up front—deep berry, cassis, vanilla. It’s robust and confidently expressive, just like we hope to be from 30 to 100. But with age comes complexity, and beneath all that Cab character are subtler notes, chewy dried fruit, dark caramel, and spice. Relish them as you mull over decades well spent, cultivating your own graceful subtleties.
Whether you’re starting an education or finishing one, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars can be on either side of the milestone. Really—whether it’s a Bachelor’s, Associate’s, Master’s, Ph.D., or even a culinary program or serious trade school, the same Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars wine can be there to bookend your degree. Start the journey with a bottle like the 2013 ARTEMIS Cabernet Sauvignon. Like an aspiring student, it’s already got some maturity, but it’s supple, too, with flavors like black cherry and vanilla—elementary and pure, capable of gaining great complexity over time, like a dissertation in wine form. Try a bottle “young” on day one and crack a second open on graduation day, and relish the fact that both of you have matured beautifully.
You’ve bought a house. There’s a literal foundation to cement your hard work. It’s a milestone moment like no other, and it deserves a wine that makes you feel rooted, joyful, and hopeful for the future, all at once. A milestone like this deserves a wine from The Legacy Collection like 2012 CASK 23 Cabernet Sauvignon. Your new house solidifies the past and welcomes the future, and the 2012 CASK 23 combines the best of deep roots with a timeless expressiveness, clambering with fruit and florals like an arbor hung with trailing grapevine. There’s dark stone fruit to remind you of the solid foundations of your home, florals like violets to evoke a graceful front garden. It drinks beautifully now and will age elegantly over the landmark years, tucked somewhere cool and dark in your very own home.
It’s your anniversary. A big one. Of course, every year in love is a victory, but milestone anniversaries deserve milestone wines. You and your husband, wife, or partner have relished the good, weathered the bad, and built a love that not only endures, but matures. You deserve to mark it with the 1997 S.L.V. Cabernet Sauvignon. In the winery’s own notes, this wine “is like a poem.” Any lasting relationship is like a poem, too—layered with meaning, pulsing to its own internal rhythms, a tug and pull of taut raw feeling like fleshy fruit braced by tannin. Consider this wine a liquid love poem: Cabernet luxuriating in its deepest berry qualities, the way love gets deeper, and richer, with time. Not only that, but tasting notes of “white pepper” and “brambly qualities” can remind you of those tricky times, the inevitable thorns and heated moments, which the two of you clambered through, hand-in-hand, always (and forever) in love.
Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s—the year itself is full of milestone moments, each with its own poignancy and color. The catalog of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars is there to mark each one. Grab a few bottles of merrily affordable 2017 Winemaker Series Cabernet with its dried herbs, white pepper, and deep fruit for the Christmas or Chanukah table; unfurl the full fruit and vibrancy of the winery’s classic style with the 2018 CASK 23 for Kwanzaa; offer the elegance of a 2018 FAY Cabernet with its violets, berries, and spice for Mother’s Day; splurge on something refined and gorgeous from the 90’s from the Legacy Collection, for a very Happy New Year. The choice is yours.
In fact, to celebrate any milestone, all you have to do is mark your calendar with every milestone moment, and explore the Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Legacy Collection . While you’re at it, join the mailing list here to get first dibs at exclusive offers. If the 1976 Judgment of Paris taught us anything, it’s that you never know when a milestone moment is just around the corner. You’ll want the right wine on hand.