Grape growing in the Stags Leap District extends back to the mid-1800s when the Silverado Trail was a quiet horse path. In 1878, Terrill L. Grigsby built Occidental Winery, the region's first winery, and the current home of Regusci Winery. Several years later, in 1893, San Francisco entrepreneur Horace Chase built the first winery to bear the Stags' Leap name. Theories abound as to the origin of the name Stags Leap but the most well loved and oft-repeated is the legend of a stag who successfully eluded hungry hunters by leaping to freedom across the District's landmark peaks.
By 1895, Chase was producing 40,000 gallons of wine under the Stags' Leap name. The Napa Valley wine industry was booming, but before long phylloxera and Prohibition changed everything, and many of the region's farmers converted their vineyards to orchards.
In 1961, a quiet renaissance began when pioneer Nathan Fay planted the region's first Cabernet vineyards. At the time Fay planted his 70-odd acres of Cabernet in coarse volcanic soil along the Silverado Trail, there were only 800 acres of Cabernet planted in the entire United States. By comparison, today there are more than 34,000 acres of Cabernet in California and 9,800 in Napa Valley alone. Fay sold most of his grapes to Joseph Heitz, and it was the Heitz Cellar "Fay Vineyard" Cabernet Sauvignon, one of the Valley's first vineyard-designated wines, that first brought attention to the region.
A turning point in the recognition of Stags Leap District wines as something special came in 1976. At a blind tasting held in Paris, nine French judges awarded first place to the 1973 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon over such formidable French producers as Mouton-Rothschild and Haut Brion. The staggering impact of this event was reinforced ten years later when exactly the same wines were tasted a second time. The winner was yet another wine from the Stags Leap District: the 1972 Clos Du Val Cabernet Sauvignon.
A small number of Wineries in Napa Valley did more to change the wine industry in the last 100 years than virtually any other production area. Within weeks of the 1976 wine tasting in Paris, Napa Valley Wines became highly sought after. Sonoma County followed suit and soon after California became known the world over as a spectacular wine region, which opened the door for Australia, South Africa and South America but it began with the Napa Valley Wineries. Each had a rich wine history but much like California ten years before, was usually only known locally.
There are more than 500 Napa Wineries and Vineyards so trying to learn about all of the Napa Valley Wines in one trip is impossible. A number of them have broken into smaller Associations to promote the micro-regional characteristics wines. By exploring them, a wine enthusiast will get a true cross section of the Wineries in Napa Valley.
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