Stag's Lead Founder Winiarski Donates $3.3 Million to UC Davis Wine Library

Warren Winiarski, founder and former owner of Stag's Leap Wine Cellars in Napa Valley and the first winemaker at the Robert Mondavi Winery back in 1966, has donated $3.3 million to UC Davis to help it build the world's most comprehensive wine library.

Grapes in Bordeaux. Photo: Guy Collins

Winiarski took courses from UC Davis's viticulture and enology professor Maynard Amerine and said wine writers ``helped advance the conversation and inspired us to render grapes with more subtlety, refinement and knowledge,'' according to an article posted in the UC Davis University News on its website. UC Davis, part of the University of California and near both San Francisco and Napa Valley, has been for many years a major world center of wine research. Its wine library currently holds more than 30,000 wine books and collections of rare manuscripts, maps and other materials dating back to 1287, according to the website.