Ground Zero for Cabernet Sauvignon: The Silverado Trail weaves through Napa Valley's Stags Leap District.
Stags Leap District ~ Napa Valley (AVA)
Stags Leap District's
20th Anniversary Reveals its Appellation Distinctiveness
by
Dan Berger
April 29, 2009
For decades, as Napa Valley gained its well-deserved reputation for growing great Cabernet Sauvignon, the famed valley has added numerous sub-appellations that purportedly carry distinctive regionality to their wines.
And at earlier times, to be sure, there were some noticeable differences between the Cabernets of Stags Leap District, Diamond Mountain District, Spring Mountain District, and Rutherford. But as time has gone on, many of the distinctions have been replaced with a homogeneity of style. Still, most of the sub-AVAs have recently tried to capture at least the image that there is a sub-regional style of wine by staging trade tastings of their best wines.
Over the last five years, numerous trade tastings have been staged of wines that are exclusively from the soils of Oakville, St. Helena, the Rutherford Dust Society, Howell Mountain, and more. But the region that seems to be ahead of the curve as far as its wine makers and loyal consumers are concerned is the
Stags Leap District.
tag’s Leap Wine Cellars’ victory over the French and Napa colleagues in the Tasting of Paris in 1976 vaulted the region to the head of the list, and a decade later, when the same tasting was re-staged, another Stags Leap-area wine, the 1972 Clos Du Val, was the winner.
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