Our goal is to create wines of classic beauty — wines with balance, complexity and harmony. Our signature style has often been described as “an iron fist in a velvet glove,” a reference to the artful balance between ripeness and restraint, softness and structure, that yields Napa Valley wines of exceptional beauty and long life. The heart of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars is undoubtedly the scenic estate vineyards, and extraordinary care is taken to assure that a wine’s aroma, flavor, and texture express a sense of place. Although the S.L.V. and FAY vineyards adjoin each other, the iconic Napa wines they produce carry expressly different aspects of the terroir. S.L.V. soils are predominantly volcanic in nature and contribute multi-layered structure, concentration, and spicy intensity, often referred to as the “fire” elements. FAY’s soils, more alluvial in makeup, yield more of the “water” elements of softness, perfume, and rich berry qualities. In 1976, Stag's Leap Wine Cellars wins the Cabernet Sauvignon category in a blind tasting staged by Steven Spurrier, an English wine merchant in Paris, among French wine experts between American and French wines. Now known as the famous Judgment of Paris, the tasting’s results are on display in our visitor center.