After a quick (and awesome) lunch at Gott’s Roadside in St. Helena, we jumped on the Silverado trail and headed down to Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. There are two Stag’s Leap wineries (the wine-growing region, or appellation, is called Stag’s Leap), and they are not connected, so you have to make sure you know which one you’re actually going to. This is the one with the history. If you spend any time in Napa, you’ll hear about the 1976 Judgment of Paris, at which 2 California wines, 1973 Stag’s Leap S.L.V. Cabernet Sauvignon and the 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay, went head to head with the best of the best French wines and won. This is generally considered to be the singular event that put California wines on the map and had a huge economic impact on Napa Valley.
Tasting Room
Stag’s Leap has a brand new tasting room, and it is a stunning stone structure, with huge windows overlooking the famed vineyards that produced the famous wine. It is very impressive, and stands way out from other tasting rooms we’ve visited. However, when you visit wineries, you find that some (like Kelham and Lasseter) are made for a smaller, more intimate experience, and others (Duckhorn, Stag’s Leap, Etude) are built more for crowds, and have a more touristy feel. If you want to get in and out fast and taste great wine, the latter is a better choice, but if you want to linger and hear the stories and meet the artists involved in the winemaking, the smaller feel is for you. Stag’s Leap is definitely built for crowds. We tend to prefer a longer, more intimate experience, but we only had 30 minutes before we had to be on the road, so this worked perfectly for us.
The Wines
The four of us stood at a small round table and ordered our Estate Collection Tasting Flight ($40, complimentary for higher end club members), and were hosted by a young man who had clearly been trained well in his presentation. We tasted four wines (in reverse order, with my ratings):
- 2010 CASK 23 Estate Cabernet Sauvignon-96 points (it should be at $225!)
- 2011 S.L.V. Estate Cabernet Sauvignon-92 points
- 2011 FAY Estate Cabernet Sauvignon-94 points
- 2013 ARCADIA VINEYARD Chardonnay-90 points
The chardonnay was very nice, more subtle than most California chardonnays-oaky, but not too much so, with a nice crispness. The 3 Cabs were all excellent-big, robust, powerful Cabs that clearly will be even better after a few years of cellaring. These are all between $110 and $225 a bottle, way too expensive for us, but well worth the $40 fee.
The S.L.V., the same wine that won the Judgment of Paris, was surprisingly our least favorite, although still quite good. The Cask 23, which was double the price of the other, was the best of the 3, and was a close second to the Kelham Reserve Cab for the best wine we tasted on the trip. If I had the money, it would probably be worth buying a bottle and putting it away for 10 years. The Fay, the cheapest of the 3 Cabs, was remarkable-it has that typical Napa Cab taste that Vonda and I love-powerful initial taste-fruity and tannic and oaky all at once, complex flavors in the middle with a long, lingering finish. This wine would be amazing in 5 years with a big juicy steak or braised short rib, but is also very drinkable now. 2011 was a rough growing year for Napa Valley, and the red wines suffered pretty significantly, but this one defied the odds. We bought 2!
Winery/Tasting Room-92 points
Wines-94 points
The Regular Wine Guy 