Warren Winiarski, founder of Stag's Leap Wine Cellars, was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1928. While studying in Italy, Winiarski acquired an appreciation for wine as a pleasant accompaniment to a meal. After returning from Europe to complete his studies in political science at the University of Chicago, Winiarski's interest in wine grew. He made his first wine in the cramped quarters of faculty campus housing using American-French hybrid grapes. Marriage and children brought thoughts of a different life. Winiarski and his wife Barbara, a painter, wanted to pursue a livelihood in rural surroundings.

In 1964, Winiarski left his position as a lecturer in the liberal arts at the University of Chicago and moved his family to California where he would fulfill the destiny of his family name: in Polish, "Winiarski" means "winemaker's son." The move coincided with a renaissance in Napa Valley winemaking. The region had been traumatized by a crippling phylloxera (grapevine root louse) outbreak in the late nineteenth century, followed by the demoralizing effects of Prohibition and the devastating economic aftermath of the depression. By the mid-1960s, a new spirit and excitement had returned to the Napa Valley. Here, Winiarski apprenticed with Lee Stewart, of the original Souverain Winery, and André Tchelistcheff of Beaulieu Vineyards, spending days working over wine vats and nights reading books about winemaking, looking forward to the day he would start his own winery. Winiarski was assistant winemaker at newly established Robert Mondavi Winery from 1966 to 1968, and then he began a search for his own land.

While Italian wines were Winiarski's introduction to winemaking, French wines became his inspiration. Winiarski sensed that the Cabernet Sauvignon grape was uniquely suited to the Napa Valley and believed that the right combination of soil and microclimate could produce a supple yet firm-textured version of the varietal. Although relatively few winemakers there were cultivating it at the time, Winiarski had a very clear vision. He was determined to produce wines that would be recognized as true new classics, reflecting their regional origins without being dominated by them; wines with the best elements of aroma, flavor and texture; supple and elegant. This style, which Winiarski describes as the "Golden Rectangle" approach to winemaking, balances opposing elements in classic proportions to create wines that are both dynamic and harmonious and guided his search for vineyard land.

Winiarski made a point of tasting various Cabernet Sauvignons from throughout the Napa Valley before the wines were blended together for bottling, which was the practice in those days. In 1969, Winiarski tasted Nathan Fay's homemade 1968 Cabernet Sauvignon, made from grapes grown below the rocky promontory of Stags Leap palisades, and he knew he finally had found the place where he could produce the new classic Cabernet.

A year later, Winiarski led a group of partners to acquire land adjoining the Fay property. The 44 acre property was planted to French Plum trees and to Alicanté Bouschet and Petite Sirah grape vines. It was first called Stag's Leap Vineyards (now known as S.L.V.), and was replanted to Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. In 1972, a winery site was found close to the vineyard.

Stag's Leap Wine Cellars was known only in the Napa Valley until the now-famous 1976 Paris Tasting, when Winiarski's 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon, the first wine produced at the new winery, bested four top-ranked Bordeaux entries, including first-growths Château Mouton-Rothschild and Château Haut-Brion. The tasting landed Stag's Leap Wine Cellars squarely among the ranks of the world's most noteworthy Cabernet producers and placed Winiarski among the ranks of world's most respected winemakers. It also fundamentally transformed how Californian wines were viewed worldwide.