The Little Red Book of Wine Law by Carol Robertson

Author:Carol Robertson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: American Bar Association
Published: 2008-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

How had this happened? How had wines that had been disparaged just a few years before, and in effect for the past 100 years, and produced by novice winemakers out of grapes grown on new vines, managed to win in a competition against the best of the best Bordeaux and Burgundy wines?

Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars was a new and relatively unknown winery even in the Napa Valley until that famous 1976 Paris tasting. It had been founded just a few years before by Warren Winiarski, a former political science lecturer from the University of Chicago, who had apprenticed at several of Napa Valley’s premier vineyards, including the Robert Mondavi Winery. In 1970, he acquired a small vineyard on the east side of the Napa Valley, in the Stags Leap area, and began producing his own wines.4

Below the cliffs in the little valley another winery, called Stags’ Leap Winery, is located. A winery had originally been situated in the same location in the 1890s, whose owner, Horace Chase, also operated a hotel under the “Stags’ Leap” name. The property fell into disrepair on Chase’s death and the winery had long since ceased operations when it was purchased in the 1970s by Carl Doumani, who rebuilt it and began producing a rich Syrah wine under the Stags’ Leap label.

After 1976, when his 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon had achieved world fame by outscoring the famous Bordeaux reds, Winiarski determined that the fame of his wine depended on the name—Stag’s Leap. So he sued Carl Doumani for trademark infringement, claiming first use of the Stag’s Leap name, and Doumani countersued, claiming that the use of the name in the 1870s by Horace Chase gave him first rights.5 The case dragged on for almost a decade. Although everyone agreed that there was a likelihood of (and in fact there was) consumer confusion between the two identically-named wineries, the judge in the case was not able to find that either party had the right to use the name to the exclusion of the other. In a Solomonic decision, which the two men memorialized in an “apostrophic” settlement agreement, both wineries agreed to keep their names, but with the apostrophes in different places: Winiarski’s Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars had the right to put the apostrophe before the “s” and Doumani’s Stags’ Leap Winery had the right to put the apostrophe after the “s.” After the settlement, the two men, who had been bitter enemies for almost 10 years, shook hands, took their families on a vacation together, and jointly released a 1985 Cabernet Sauvignon wine—a 50-50 blend from each winery—that they called “Accord.”6

Shortly after this historic settlement, Napa wine growers pushed the federal government to adopt a Stags Leap District appellation, and Winiarski and Doumani found themselves this time on the same side opposing the proposal, which they argued would dilute both of their trademarks. They lost, and now the words “Stags Leap District” can appear on any wine made from grapes grown in the region where, according to legend, a mighty stag once saved himself from certain death.

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