Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars

Collector’s Corner

Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars

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I started collecting wine in the mid-1980s, during my second visit to Napa Valley. I had the opportunity to taste some older vintages at a winery there and realized how much more interesting and satisfying the wines were when aged and cellared properly. It was on that trip that I put down my first wines for later consumption. Among them was a 1984 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars CASK 23 Cabernet Sauvignon.

Age Appropriate

By Karen MacNeil
May 2007

Here’s one of the biggest myths about wine: It gets better if you age it. While some wines (like Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars “CASK 23” Cabernet Sauvignon) unquestionably do evolve in compelling and fascinating ways over time, there is actually no basis to the presumption that wine de facto gets better the longer you keep it. Sadly, I know this all too well from experience.

A Great American Wine

By Paul Luckacs
November 2006

Cabernet Sauvignon from the Napa Valley is the one American wine that enjoys truly international renown. Its fame has penetrated even the most hidebound Old World cellars, so much so that for many people it serves as a symbol of American wine at large—the country’s vinous achievements but also its excesses. Over the years, many individual labels—from groundbreakers like Beaulieu Georges de Latour and Inglenook Cask, through heavyweights like Heitz Martha’s Vineyard and Dunn Howell Mountain—have contributed to its fame. But one particular wine, and one seminal moment, stands out. In 1976, when a three year-old Cabernet from the ﬂedgling Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars triumphed at Steven Spurrier’s now legendary Paris tasting, Napa and by extension all American wine began to emerge from its cocoon of provincial isolation. Even more important, that event initiated a process in which critics, consumers, and vintners all began to rethink what constitutes true merit or greatness in wine.