It was three years ago next month that Warren Winiarski handed over the keys to Stag's Leap Wine Cellars to Tuscany's Piero Antinori and Ted Baseler, CEO of Ste Michelle Wine Estates, Washington state's largest wine producer.
The partners purchased Stag's Leap, one of Napa Valley's most famous producers and 'winner' of the 1976 Judgment of Paris tasting, when Winiarski , then 79, realised that his adult children were not fully committed to operating the estate.
So Winiarski, who founded Stag's Leap in1970, contacted the person at the top of his list of prospective buyers, Antinori, who knows a thing...