Winemaker Notes
Enjoy this CASK 23 with red wine and porcini braised short ribs with polenta, honey and calabrian chile pork chops with roasted apples, or truffled goat cheese risotto with prosciutto, arugula, and aged balsamic.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This seamless blend of oak spices, cherry-plum fruitiness and silky tannins makes for an irresistible wine. A Napa classic and collectible, it is big and mouthfilling but so well polished that it's tempting to drink young.
Cellar Selection -
James Suckling
Notes of blackberries and blackcurrants with dark chocolate, tobacco leaf, spice box and nut shell. Full-bodied with an array of finely polished, silky tannins and seamless, sleek texture. Compact and a little tight in the middle, yet refined with a deep dark fruit backbone. Long and smooth.
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Wine & Spirits
Pretty great wine. Winemaker Marcus Notaro and viticulturist Kirk Grace started the 2020 harvest for Cask 23 on the 12th of September; Notaro says they had brought in all their cabernet from Fay and S.L.V., the estate vineyards that provide this blend, just as the Glass Fire broke out (it started in Deer Park, near St. Helena, on September 27). Notaro believes the haze from distant fires earlier in the season did not impact the fruit, but the heat spikes of August did, accelerating ripeness. He credits what the team learned from the late season heat of 2015 and 2017 for their success with 2020, managing the vines through irrigation and “physically lowering the wires on the hot side of the canopy to shade the clusters from getting overheated.” His 2020 Cask 23 feels grounded in its alluvial depths (the Fay Vineyard, on an ancient river bed, makes up 53 percent of the blend). The wine’s blue fruit is round and stony, resinous and generous with black frills at the edges, filigree from the heat that adds detail without touching the core of fruit. That fruit presents a pure, completely clean face to the wine. This vintage will take a decade or more to show at its peak.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2020 Cask 23 Cabernet Sauvignon deliveries a bouquet redolent of black cherries, dusty earth and cassis. Full-bodied, it's round, opulent and ripe but framed by tannins that grow increasingly firm on the lingering finish. Give it some time—it could evolve into a true classic.
Rating: 95+ -
Wine Spectator
Displays alder dust notes around a core of creamed plum and boysenberry preserves, while warm earth and savory accents gain steam through the finish, leaving a touch of grain. Two bottles were consistent, while a third sample did show an ashy edge on the finish. Proceed with caution. Drink now through 2035.
Considered one of the "first growths" of Napa Valley, Stag's Leap Wine Cellars produces renowned Cabernet Sauvignon from its historic Stags Leap District estate vineyards. Learn about Stags Leap history and estate-grown wines.
History of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars
Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars was founded in 1970 with the purchase of a 40 acre property in the now famed Stag’s Leap District AVA in Napa Valley. The winery brought international recognition to California winemaking and the Napa Valley region when their 1973 S.L.V. Cabernet Sauvignon won the 1976 Paris Tasting, also known as the "Judgement of Paris."
Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Estate-Grown Cabernet Sauvignon
Stag's Leap Wine Cellars' three estate-grown Cabernet Sauvignons - CASK 23, S.L.V. and Fay - are among the most highly regarded and collected Cabernet Sauvignons worldwide. The Cabernet wines are fashioned to express richness balanced by elegant restraint, an approach often described as "an iron fist in a velvet glove."
A noble variety bestowed with both power and concentration, Cabernet Sauvignon enjoys success all over the globe, its best examples showing potential to age beautifully for decades. Cabernet Sauvignon flourishes in Bordeaux's Medoc where it is often blended with Merlot and smaller amounts of some combination of Cabernet Franc, Malbecand Petit Verdot. In the Napa Valley, ‘Cab’ is responsible for some of the world’s most prestigious, age-worthy and sought-after “cult” wines. Somm Secret—DNA profiling in 1997 revealed that Cabernet Sauvignon was born from a spontaneous crossing of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc in 17th century southwest France.
Legend has it that quick and nimble stags would escape the indigenous hunters of southern Napa Valley through the landmark palisades that sit just northeast of the current city of Napa. As a result, the area was given the name, Stags Leap. While its grape-growing history dates back to the mid-1800s, winemaking didn’t really take off until the mid-1970s after a small but pivotal blind tasting called the Judgement of Paris.
When a 1973 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon won first place against its high-profile Bordeaux contenders, like Chateau Mouton Rothschild and Chateau Haut-Brion, international attention to the Stags Leap District of Napa Valley escalated rapidly.
The vineyards in this one-of-a-kind wine growing region receive hot afternoon air reflecting off of its eastern palisade formation. In combination with the cool evening breezes from the San Pablo Bay just south, this becomes an optimal environment for grape growing. While many varieties could thrive here, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot dominate with virtually no others, save for a spot or two of Syrah.
Stags Leap soils—eroded volcanic and old river sediments—encourage well established root systems and result in complex, terroir-driven wines. Stags Leap District reds have a distinct sour cherry and black berry character with baking spice and dried earth aromas, and supple tannins.