Favia 2013 & 2014 Favia Wines Rompecabezas Red Wine SET 750 ml

Extremely Rare Mini-Vertical from Screaming Eagle Alumni

The only thing on planet earth better than the chance to secure a bottle of Andy Erickson and Annie Favia’s namesake wine is the chance to secure TWO bottles. For a short time, we are offering a MINI-VERTICAL of Favia Rompecabezas Red—a gorgeous, muscular, and aromatic Châteauneuf-du-Pape-style wine produced with grapes from the celebrated Shake Ridge Ranch in the Sierra Foothills of Amador County. Included in this set are the 2013 and 2014 vintages of Rompecabezas.

We sat down with Andy Erickson and Annie Favia to talk about Rompecabezas. Click here to see our exclusive video interview.

These wines are the epitome of structure, elegance, and finesse. It cannot be overstated or said enough, but Favia wines start with the greatest of care in the vineyard, courtesy of Annie, and are shepherded to bottle with the priceless experience that Andy brings to the cellar. They have literally made Napa Valley’s all-time greatest wines: Andy’s first winemaking job was with John Kongsgaard at Newton, and then Bob Levy of Harlan scooped him up to assist at BOND. Later, he became the winemaker at Ovid, Arietta, Screaming Eagle, Dalla Valle, and most recently Mayacamas. Annie’s viticultural work began with David Abreu, shepherding Napa’s Grand Cru vineyards for Harlan, Screaming Eagle, Ovid, Sloan, Bryant, Colgin, and Staglin.

For $150 per set, on this Wine Access EXCLUSIVE, the 2013 and 2014 Favia Rompecabezas will be a showpiece and a highlight of your dinner table. We strongly encourage three sets, if you’re able—two bottles to enjoy now, four to hold and experience as they gain complexity in the cellar over time.

Favia is all about aromatics and elegance, and Rompecabezas, although plenty powerful, has both virtues in spades. Muscular Grenache was co-fermented with Mourvèdre in concrete, then blended with Syrah and aged for 20 months in neutral French oak and concrete eggs. The result is a blend of dark, dense California intensity, and savory Rhône-style complexity, showing ripe red fruit, five spice, and salted licorice. This is the work of two California masters.

Vinified at the couple’s winery in Coombsville, but sourced from the celebrated gem of Shake Ridge Ranch in the Sierra foothills, which straddles a ridge at nearly 2,000 feet, and boasts iron-rich red soils (not unlike Napa’s Oakville) that contain quartz in delicate flecks and in chunks the size of car batteries. It is a vineyard source that feels natural, wild, and far-flung—the kind that is kindling a sense of discovery not only in them, but in California luminaries like Helen Keplinger (Keplinger, Carte Blanche, Grace Family, Bryant) and Morgan Twain-Peterson MW (Bedrock Wine Co.). Amador County was that place—“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. High, arid and steep, like the Priorat region of Spain, the property consists of hills and valleys that result in vineyards of different aspects, which is crucial to the chore of getting the varieties—the plush and extroverted Grenache and the more introverted and structured Mourvèdre—to ripen together.

This story of Favia begins in 2003. It was not launched by hyping the 100-point and near-perfect critical scores that Andy Erickson has accumulated. In fact, for the first several years, no Favia wines were even submitted for review. Instead, Andy and Annie—who have laid their hands on some of the highest-profile wines in California for two decades now—started Favia with a whisper, offering the wines exclusively to their mailing list and a handful of select restaurants. Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry was one of their strongest early supporters. This is your chance to own two vintages of one wine from two masters whose talents are backed by their untouchable combined experiences.