Hello friends. One of the most exciting developments of 2013 for us was the release of our first private-label, negociant, Full Pull & Friends bottle.
We were overjoyed with the response from two camps: First, from our list members, who have made it clear that having access to these kinds of small-lot, high-quality bottlings made exclusively for us is an appealing proposition indeed. And second, from a number of our outstanding partner wineries in Washington. After that first FP&F offer went out in in October, we started receiving barrel samples and shiner samples from all over the state, with all sorts of interesting juice looking for a happy home.
Several of those samples were exceptional, and we now have a collection of barrels set to go into bottle throughout 2014, so expect a smattering of new Full Pull & Friends bottlings throughout the remainder of the year. Beginning with today’s wine, which has one big thing in common with our inaugural FP&F bottling and is otherwise quite different.
The one big thing it has in common, of course, is that it too is a Cabernet Sauvignon (considering the bevy of Cabernet lovers on our list, I doubt there will be many complaints). And the story here is one that will be similar for many of these negociant opportunities.
Put yourselves in the shoes of a winemaker. Harvest time comes along, and you’re offered access to beautiful Phinny Hill fruit. The only problem: you’re offered access to too much of it. Now you can take a smaller portion, but that means as your winery grows, you might never get access again to this larger amount. Or… you can take the larger portion and figure out what to do with it later.
In many cases, lots like this get “bulked off,” sold on the bulk market, where they’re usually blended into big anonymous lots. But you can imagine, from a winemaker’s point of view, this is painful. Here you have single-vineyard Phinny juice, vinified carefully, and it seems a pity to see it blended into oblivion.
Enter Full Pull, and everyone is happier.
The winery is happier, because their carefully-tended juice gets bottled on its own and offered to folks who they know to be enthusiastic about Washington wine. And our list members are happier, because we all get access to these little gems that would have otherwise never been available.
The front label is again an abstract design, similar but not exactly the same as the first label. And the back label again says “Full Pull & Friends.” These will always be wines that we *want* to put our name on, that we feel represent compelling opportunities and solid values for our list members.
Now in some cases, we’ll be able to include the name of the winery involved, and in others (like today’s offer) we won’t. Generally, the advantage to unnamed wineries is that we can negotiate better tariffs, and the drawback is that we’re left with some intrigue around the source of the wine. Our plan continues to be to only work with wineries that are already popular with our list members, wineries with whom Full Pull has a long relationship.
We first started working with today’s winery during Full Pull’s first few months of existence (late 2009/early 2010), and we’ve since offered more than 25 of their wines. To be clear, this is *not* from the same winery as our first FP&F bottling. It is single vineyard, coming entirely from beautiful Phinny Hill in the Horse Heaven Hills (it won’t take much internet research to see that most Cabernets with Phinny fruit command a considerably higher tag), and it was aged for about a year in a combination of one- and two-year old French oak. I’ve already gone on record saying that 2012 is going to be a great vintage for Cabernet. After the cooler 2010 and 2011 vintages, where it was tough to ripen heat-loving Cabernet, it has been a real pleasure to taste 2012.
This begins with a nose combining blackcurrant and pomegranate fruit, violets, woodsmoke, and subtleties of Horse Heaven’s signature graphitic minerality. That minerality is more pronounced on the palate, where it marries nicely to the rich cassis fruit, exotic star anise, and espresso. Texturally, it picks up steam after a creamy mid-palate and rolls into chewy finish, the tannins redolent of black tea. The balance (plenty of 2012 ripeness, but no excess weight on a 14.1% alc frame) and the intensity were what first seduced me at the tariff offered to us, and then the intellectual thrill of tasting single-vineyard Cab from an up-and-coming vineyard sealed the deal.
It has the structure to age nicely for another decade, but like many Cabernets from 2012, it brings an awful lot of pleasure right now. Please limit order requests to 12 bottles, and we’ll do our best to fulfill all requests. We brought in a decent amount of this, so it *may* be available for reorder, but if the appetite for this resembles the first FP&F offer, perhaps not. Either way, the wine is in the warehouse now and is ready for immediate pickup or shipping during the next temperature-appropriate shipping window.
Full Pull Wines Offer Archive 