John Shafer left a Chicago publishing career in 1972 to buy a 209-acre hillside estate in what would become the Stags Leap District, crushing his first Cabernet in 1978. Shafer was a key organizer behind the district's 1989 AVA designation, and the estate's Hillside Select Cabernet remains one of Napa's benchmark mountain wines, still helmed by winemaker Elias Fernandez since 1994.