A legend among Napa Valley wineries. A winery that has been producing wine commercially since 1880. The winery was bought in 1972 by John Shafer, who had nothing to do with winemaking until then. However, he saw the hilly terrain of his vineyards as an advantage and began to cultivate them into terraces. The style of his first wine was something between a mistake and a happy coincidence. Since he was new to Napa Valley, he didn't have the manpower to harvest the crop. As a result, the grapes stayed in the vineyard longer and reached much greater sugar content and ripeness. To his surprise, however, they yielded a wine that was full-bodied, structured, but elegant at the same time. The next five vintages were a slight disappointment, as they picked grapes at the usual sugar levels of the rest of Napa Valley. In 1983, he turned the winemaking over to his son Doug, with whom he created, in the same year, what is now an icon of this Stag's Leap winery, The Hillside Select Cabernet Sauvignon. Today, Elias Fernandez has been the oenologist for more than 40 vintages, and he and Doug are dedicated to preserving John Shafer's legacy.