Vineyard in Napa by Shafer Doug

Author:Shafer, Doug
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2012-12-05T16:00:00+00:00

1. Wine Spectator, December 15, 1987. 1984 Cabernet review: www.winespectator.com/wine/detail/source/search/note_id/48417; 1985 Merlot review: www.winespectator.com/wine/detail/source/search/note_id/3848.

TWENTY-EIGHT

The War of the Apostrophes

The property next to ours, with its castle-like, 1890s-era manor house and surrounding vineyard, had passed through various hands over time. During World War II it had served as a rest camp for naval officers and was the setting for at least three Hollywood movies, including This Earth Is Mine. During the later 1940s and into the 1950s it remained a visible landmark in Napa Valley as a well-known resort. After passing to new ownership in 1956, the place closed down as a guest facility and went into quiet decline. Yet at least some grape growing continued on the ranch, as it did elsewhere in the Stags Leap1 area, until the 1960s and early 1970s, when the local wine industry experienced the resurgence we covered earlier. At that time much of the area’s orchard and dairy land was converted (or in many cases reconverted) to vineyards.

In 1970, among the influx of new growers and vintners, Carl Doumani purchased this property and began producing wine under the Stags’ Leap Winery label. Carl had done well in restaurants and property development in Los Angeles, where he bought his first bar when he was a twenty-year-old. Once Carl had moved here, Robert Mondavi reached out to him about the grapes on his site, which sparked an interest in the wine business.

In that same year Warren Winiarski bought a site a bit farther south in Stags Leap, adjacent to Nathan Fay’s Cabernet vines. Like Dad, Warren was from Chicago, though his background was in academia rather than in the corporate world. He had a degree in political theory from the University of Chicago and had studied for a year in Naples, Italy, where he developed a lifelong love for all things related to wine. After teaching political theory for a few years at the University of Chicago, he eventually packed up his family and moved to Napa in 1964, where he worked for Lee Stewart at Souverain, learning the basics of winemaking. He then broadened his knowledge at Robert Mondavi Winery, where he had the chance to taste wines sourced from vineyards throughout the Valley, since Mondavi purchased fruit from far and wide. In the fall of 1969, while trying to decide where to stake out his own future here, Warren had a chance to taste Nathan Fay’s 1968 Cabernet and was so profoundly impressed by the flavor and texture of the wine that he knew he’d found the right spot. He purchased a 52-acre prune and apple orchard next to Nathan’s place and set about creating a vineyard, naming it Stag’s Leap Vineyard, which became the initial fruit source for Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars.

It seems a foregone conclusion that these neighboring wineries with names set apart by little more than an apostrophe, helmed by two head-strong characters like Warren and Carl, would eventually clash.

In their first lawsuit in 1972, Carl sued Warren to halt the latter’s use of the name “Stag’s Leap.

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