Napa Valley · Appellation

Stags Leap District

Approved in 1989 as the first American AVA justified primarily on its soils, Stags Leap District is a narrow "valley within a valley" backed by the volcanic rock palisades that give it its name — cliffs that radiate stored daytime heat into the cool bay-influenced nights. That interplay of heat and cooling breeze off San Pablo Bay produces a famously polished, "iron fist in a velvet glove" Cabernet Sauvignon, the style that carried a 1973 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars bottling to victory at the 1976 Judgment of Paris.