2011 Leviathan

Leviathan is from the wife and husband team of Annie Favia of Favia wines and Andy Erickson, one of Napa Valley’s star winemakers. Erickson makes wine for Favia’s original enterprise, and for Leviathan, which was started explicitly to make one red blend per vintage. Like some other vintners and winemakers in California who are harkening back to the practice of creating “field blends” of grapes from various vineyards, each Leviathan is a unique blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Syrah and Merlot. Robert M. Parker Jr. has called Leviathan a “small, high quality boutique operation” whose 2010s, he said, were “brilliant.” Only a few hundred cases are produced annually.

Napa Valley AVA is the most famous winemaking region in the United States and one of the most prestigious in the world. With nearly 43,000 acres of vineyards and more than 300 wineries, it is the heart of fine wine production in the United States. Winemaking started in Napa in 1838 when George C. Yount planted grapes and began producing wine commercially. Other winemaking pioneers followed in the late 19th century, including the founders of Charles Krug, Schramsberg, Inglenook and Beaulieu Vineyards. An infestation of phylloxera, an insect that attacks vine roots, and the onset of Prohibition nearly wiped out the nascent Napa wine industry in the early 20th century. But by the late 1950s and early 1960s Robert Mondavi and other visionaries were producing quality wines easily distinguishable from the mass-produced jug wines made in California’s Central Valley. Napa Valley’s AVA was established in 1983, and today there are 16 sub-appellations within the Napa Valley AVA. Many grapes grow well in Napa’s Mediterranean climate, but the region is best known for Cabernet Sauvignon. Chardonnay is also very successfully cultivated, and about 30% of the AVA’s acreage is planted to white grapes, with the majority of those grapes being Chardonnay,