Stags' Leap Winery The Leap Estate Grown Cabernet Sauvignon 2016
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Suckling
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Spirits
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Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This is a classic-styled cabernet from Stags’ Leap with wonderful polish and finesse. It’s all here, caressing your palate with currants and dark chocolate and pine nut undertones. Extremely long. Better after 2021.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Composed of 90% Cabernet Sauvignon, 7% Petit Verdot and 3% Malbec, the deep garnet-purple colored 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon The Leap starts off a little closed, soon unfurling to reveal notes of cassis, fresh blackberries, mulberries and tobacco leaf with hints of new leather, bay leaves, pencil lead and espresso. Medium-bodied, the palate has great intensity and freshness with a firm frame of ripe, grainy tannins and loads of soft-spoken savory nuances poking through the black berry layers, finishing on a lingering mineral note. Rating: 95+
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Wine & Spirits
Christophe Paubert blends this wine from a range of estate blocks, the vines tucked up against the Stags Leap escarpment. He vinifies the blocks separately, then creates this barrel selection, his top cabernet, just before bottling. It’s fresh and fragrant in 2016, with the youthful energy the vines infused into their fruit when a long series of drought years had come to an end. The plump black fruit has the espresso richness of Stags Leap District cabernet, along with an earthy undertow. Powerful and refined, the wine seems to draw the vineyard’s volcanic rock into its lasting tannins.
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Wine Spectator
This is well-formed, with fine-grained structure carrying a nicely defined core of red and black currant and bitter plum fruit flavors while letting subtle floral, anise and singed alder notes fill in along the edges. Shows depth but acts restrained overall. Best from 2021 through 2033.
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A fashionable country resort in the mid-twentieth century, popular with Hollywood due to its 1892 stone Manor House and historic gardens, legends of bootleggers and gangsters, ghosts and gypsies, Stags' Leap has been home to three major family groups up through the modern revitalization of the winery that began in the 1970s.
Stags Leap Manor, as it was called in the 1920s, was known as one of the prominent country retreats in the Napa Valley at a time when resort and spa business was big. In addition to lodging and dining, amenities included lawn tennis, swimming, horseback riding, children's activities, golf, music, cards, a library, and Napa Valley wines and liquors (prior to and after Prohibition).
An intimate valley within the greater Napa Valley, Stags Leap is a place of natural beauty, storied buildings and gardens, a lively history, and a reputation for elegant wines showing finesse and intensity.
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.