2011 Casa Piena Cabernet Sauvignon

Casa Piena is a 14-acre estate in Yountville founded by Carmen Policy, the former president and CEO of the San Francisco 49ers NFL team. Growing up in an Italian American family in Youngstown, Ohio, Policy’s interest in wine dates to his youth when the family adults and neighbors made their own wine. After retiring from his work with the 49ers, Policy and his wife founded Casa Piena, a name that means “full house” in Italian and is a reference to their family of five children and many grandchildren. Star winemaker Thomas Rivers Brown makes Casa Piena wines, which are Cabernet Sauvignons. The debut vintage was the 2006, and reviewers have been complimentary, awarding the wines scores in the mid-90s. The wines are generally available by mailing list only.

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,

One of the most widely grown grape varieties, it can be found in nearly every wine growing region. A cross between Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc. It’s a hardy vine that produces a full-bodied wine with high tannins and great aging potential.