1979 Stag’s Leap Napa Cab Sauv for “Open That Bottle Night”

I may open hundreds of bottles of wine a year, but faced with a 1979 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, I was nervous. Very nervous.

How did I come to be in possession of such a wine — a wine with a famous provenance having beat French Bordeaux in 1976? On a late winter midweek day, not long after I turned 21 in the 1980s, my fiancé Ken and I took a drizzly drive through shiny green hills from Palo Alto to Napa for a day of wine tasting with no particular wineries in mind and no appointments. Unlike today in most of Napa where tastings cost $50 and up, and require advance reservations, back then most tastings were more causal, free or only $5 ($15 in 2026 dollars); you could just show up and belly up to the bar. We were college students with little money to spend on wine or really anything else, so going wine tasting was a cheap date especially since we brought our own picnic!

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