2014 Favia Rompecabezas Red Wine 750 ml

Perfectionist Winemakers’ California Grand Cru Secret

This is your chance to discover a slice of California’s Grand Cru terroir, backed by two Napa Valley masters with an untouchable knack for finding the state’s best vineyards.

If To Kalon is Napa’s undisputed Grand Cru, the vineyard source for Andy Erickson’s 2014 Favia Rompecabezas—the steeply-sloped Shake Ridge Vineyard—is Northern California’s up-and-coming Grand Cru. Erickson, an alum of Screaming Eagle, Bond, and Ovid, scooped up a handful of rows from Shake Ridge for Rompecabezas, which is rarely available outside Favia’s exclusive mailing list (and select Michelin 3-star restaurants). This is your shot at owning a blockbuster red from a winemaking legend and the most talked about vineyard east of Napa.   

Wines produced from comparable Grand Cru sites around California—To Kalon, Dunn, Stag’s Leap’s Fay Vineyard, and Monte Rosso—easily command prices three times as high as the wines coming out of Amador County’s Shake Ridge Vineyard. Perched at over 1,700 feet (higher than most Napa vines) this Grand Cru site is a hotbed for a bevy of 100-point California winemakers.

The jewel of the Sierra Foothills, this 46-acre mountain vineyard is the secret garden of top viticulturist Ann Kraemer, a Napa Valley escapee who consulted for the Golden State’s most iconic vineyards including Stagecoach, Cain, and Shafer before staking her own claim in Amador’s wild mountain foothills.

Ever since, winemaking luminaries like Erickson, along with Tim Milos (Hidden Ridge) Helen Keplinger (Keplinger Wines, Bryant Family), Tegan Passalacqua (Turley), Morgan Twain-Peterson MW (Bedrock), and 30 others we can’t mention by name, have flocked to the site. Here iron-rich red soils, like those in Napa’s Oakville AVA, are flecked with quartz crystals the size of car batteries, and grapes planted here produce wines of structure, elegance, and finesse. It is a vineyard source that feels natural, wild, and far-flung—“where the good stuff is,” according to Erickson.

The diurnal shift at Shake Ridge is staggering: The mercury can plummet 50 degrees between the heat of the afternoon and the chilly nights, a condition that results in beautiful natural acidity. Rompecabeza has these virtues in spades. Named for the Spanish word for puzzle, this bottling is a tribute to the mind-boggling complexity of Sierra foothills terroir. Balancing Napa-like intensity with savory Rhône-style complexity, showing ripe red fruit and brown spices. Start adding these to your collection before prices skyrocket into triple-digit territory.