Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/4337
Richard Steltzner corrects me as soon as I ask the question, "What was the 'Eureka!' mo- ment when you realized Stags Leap District was home to the best wines in the world?" In a gruff tone, he replies, "You mean distinctive wines; there are no best wines of the world." Steltzner sits with us on the patio outside his tasting room, where we sip a Steltzner 2005 Pinotage Rosé with winemak- er Tim Dolvin. It was legendary enologist André Tchel- istcheff who informed Steltzner about "the valley," and in 1965, Steltzner Vineyards was founded on the Silverado Trail. "It was in the 1970s that we knew we had something dif- ferent here, a unique climatic bowl, a valley within a valley." Steltzner explains that the recurrent af- ternoon breeze, which appears in the Stags Leap District before any other Napa Valley location, causes trans-evaporation and air movement, creating smaller leaves on the vine and naturally thinning canopies ("before we even knew about canopy management") planted on deep, well-drained volcanic soils. Steltzner was part of the group that petitioned for the AVA. "We wanted to add 'Stags Leap' to our labels back in 1977, and we did for three years—until the BATF informed me we couldn't anymore." He points to top wine law specialist Richard Mendelson as the person who provided legal services to influence the granting of the AVA. "We started to organize a group—belligerent neighbors—to talk about contour lines and borders. It wasn't easy. Mendelson helped lead the way." "The Cabernet program is what we think about all the time," states Russ Weis, General Manager of Silverado Vineyards, founded in 1981 by Walt Disney's daughter Diane and her husband, then Disney CEO Ron Miller. The winery farms six proper- ties, with a third of the total acreage in Stags Leap District. The site surround- ing the winery is Silverado's Stags Leap District Vine- yard, where five distinctive clones of Cabernet and three clones of Merlot are grafted to six different rootstocks. These grapes contribute to all three of Silverado's Cabernets, as well as to the Stags Leap District Single- Vineyard Selection. "Our job as a 30-year-old winery is to give buyers and somms something to think about," Weis says as we taste the 2005 SOLO Cabernet ($85), the single-vineyard estate wine off the Home Ranch property. This heady red shows evolved charac- teristics of grilled meat, lav- ender, pomegranate, coffee bean and deep stone fruit. 42 / the tasting panel / november 2009 Richard Steltzner STELTZNER VINEYARDS Jon Emmerich and Russ Weis SILVERADO VINEYARDS Winemaker Jon Emmerich and GM Russ Weis of Silverado Vineyards. Ron and Diane Disney Miller built Silvera- do in 1981; the Home Ranch, where one of the district's three original Cabernet plantings from the 1960s took shape, is now the source of Silverado's Stags Leap District SOLO, their flagship SLD wine.